IS DRINKING=CHILLING?

For me it started when I was in s.s.s.1. I was a student at a government high school that offered boarding house arrangements for interested students. Being a state government school, the student body comprised kids from diverse background and upbringing, from different works of life. The first time I had to knuckle up in self defense, was whilst I was a student at that school. So also was my first ever school year without finishing in the top 3 tier in class. By the end of junior year I had settled in and made so many friends, some of whom I’ve being able to retain to this present day, others I’ve lost contact with. One of the persons I was friends with is Emmanuel, nick named ‘notorious’ or ‘noto’. He was a year ahead in class but he was years ahead of me in experience. Noto was a habitual offender, always breaking one school rule or the other. Despite this, he was a very sweet person, arguably one of the nicest persons I’ve ever known.

There was this mid-term break we had in my first year in senior high, the break was for a period of 4 days. I decided to stay back in school for some reason. Anyway, to fill the long hours of each day with activities, we sometimes resort to hiking and exploring the surrounding settlements that were primitive. On one of such trips during this break, I left school in the company of Noto who was also staying back in school for the break. Whilst outside, he took charge of navigating us around and he showed a good knowledge of the routes. After hiking for a while, we arrived at a compound where everyone exchanged pleasantries with Noto and addressed him by his moniker. We were offered sits and without prior enquiry, offered cups of palm wine. I was familiar with this substance so I had no qualm with accepting the offering and helping myself to its content. When our supposed host noticed we were done with that, he poured us both a healthy measure of something else that was transparent. I followed Noto’s lead by taking a mouth full but alas! It didn’t taste at all like how I anticipated. In fact, it hurt my mouth and I didn’t want to swallow, Noto noticed my reaction and started laughing. In order to save face, I forced the substance down my throat knowing well from the smell, that what I just had was hard liquor and this was unfamiliar territory for me. In no time the liquor took effect and I started seeing things. I requested that we leave for school immediately and he obliged. That was the longest walk of my life despite the close proximity of where we were to our school premises. On getting to school, I went straight to bed. That was my first time consuming alcohol.

My second experience was during the summer break of that school year. My girl friend at the time, came to my house and requested that I accompany her to her friend’s house at festac. On getting there, our host offered to take us out for refreshments. Whilst the girls ordered food, I ordered for a bottle of ‘small stout’. I guess I was trying to impress the girls by posturing like a grown up. I had to go through the ordeal of swallowing most of the bitter content of the bottle. On our way home, I slept for most of the ride back. By the time I was through with high school, I had become a seasoned casual drinker.

The other day I was on twitter, mr badt guy tweeted a question, ‘Is drinking=chilling?’ He actually drinks too but then, I understood the reason why he must have tweeted that. These days, getting high one way or the other is the most common recreation amongst youths these days. Be it at the beach, in the club, at a local bar, or even at home. You hear boys bragging about how much alcohol they can consume at a sitting. Please don’t get me wrong, I have no qualm with drinking at all, but when drinking becomes the high point of your recreational routine, there is a problem then. Ladies can testify to this. As a lady, have you ever visited a male friend and then he takes you to a bar to entertain you? Especially ladies that don’t drink. The best guys like this can do is, take her to a posh bar and make her sit idly whilst he along with is friends, guzzle bottle after bottle of alcohol and gist noisily. If she’s lucky, she’ll own a BB and use that in whiling away the boring time.

These days, you see boys using pictures with outrageous numbers of bottles of alcohol, as their d.p. on BBm to brag (in their minds, they are chilling). Whatever happened to other forms of recreation like visiting the zoo (Oops! There are none operational), the museum, concerts, entertainment events, the beach (for other fun activities)? etc. For those of us artistically inclined, there are private galleries in operation these days as well as private libraries with multimedia functions to explore. Alcohol shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind when we think relaxation. Let’s try to be creative when drawing up plans for recreation or a date. Trying out other fun stuffs will aid in stimulating our minds, which in turn will enable our creative juices to flow freely. How you relax speak volumes of your level of exposure and style.

Personally, I’ve missed a lot of beautiful Saturday and Sunday mornings because of alcohol laden prior nights. Whilst in search of the ideal relaxation routine, you can like to stop at G12 in Oniru or Eldorado at Elegushi, where you can catch me with my skunk and bottle of absolute vodka, Lol! I’m just kidding o!

statistics on life

They ask me how i know what i know about life?
what i know about life, i have learnt from my failures
i hate gambling cos i think the odds is against the gambler
what i didn't know is that from the day of any human's birth,
we've been dealing against the odds of making good off life like we're in a casino
the stats are really dreadful if you look at the figures
50% says that the smart guy with talent in anything at all would make it
but if you put in the reality of the situation,by situation, i mean constraint and adversity
then you can make that 30
the average dude with nothing exceptional has got a tenth of that, which is 3%
and with mother luck's generosity his chances are raised to 5
the guy with nothing to offer would surely never make it
unless something unusual happens like some unknown rich relative of his makes him
a beneficiary of their estate without his knowledge, but still at that
i've seen diamonds as large as a cell block or it's cash equivalent slip through the palms like rice grains
welcome to the real world. life is not fair they say, yes! it's dark and full of grime
as well as some spots that look like eczema on an ebony skin
this makes the view on life aesthetically unpleasing
but really some people have got it good and pay for it in other ways
sometimes to make a headway you have to ignore the map thrown in your lap
opportunity meets preparation is my definition of luck
he's been prepared all his life but the opportunity to showcase his skills never just come
like an army platoon put on red alert in case of a war that never got fought
but we don't stop paying the wages of the military because there's no war on the horizon
the moral of this piece is that success and happiness in life is not a measure of how much
remember the folks that have it good and pay for it in other ways
92% of the world's population fall in the 5%ers, you won't believe this
92% of the world's 'happy' population fall in the 5%ers. outrageous right?
my charge to you is, do something positive, love and live life to the fullest.

School of thoughts; thot101

The need for change in one's life is not characterised by a loss of identity. We as humans have an edge over other animals, this edge is analytical thinking!! we all have it but each individual has developed theirs to different levels. To function optimally in life, one has got to have a discerning mind that can sort through the rubbles of data thrown at one as a result of life's occurences. one has to analyse and assess every situation which includes how you yourself behave as an individual. life is filled with struggles, what this implies simply is that every situation in life is a struggle and your role as an individual is to strive and contend, eventually coming out of these situations a better person. putting this mentality in the context of character formation, society expects that we behave in a morally upright way hence the struggle is the effort you put into correcting your misdemeanors, vices, and whatever shortcomings in your character. Since the beginning of the recording of history, nobody has ever manifested half the capacity and potentials they had in them yet we celebrate lots of them as legends, imagine the prospects of manifesting more. Never stop striving for perfection, let 'ever restlessly forward' be your watch word

Ironically speaking

Life starts with us all yearning for perfection but as years go by and the reality of things set in, we start to desire the normalty of our earlier years. If the eventuality has been decided already, what is the point of our existence then?
Two sepeate individuals with similar desires and character components, try to achieve similar goals and go about it in similar ways but end up with different outcomes, how? Am still trying to figure out how what doesn't kill you make you stronger, logically i think it will leave you paralysed or terribly scarred. There is no authority on the subject of love so how do we know who's acting right? We keep feigning perfection, we are quick to judge others and we seem to know a better way to have succeeded where others failed, yet as a society we campaign against hypocrisy.
Recent years have witnessed a change in trend from 'dos and donts' to 'haves and have nots', from 'what do you' to 'what's in it for me', etc. Everybody is trying to help me be a better person when in actual fact, they should use my life as a model for healthy existential living standards. They rebuke certain behaviors i portray but the alarming truth is i picked up these behaviors from them.
Growing up has become so intense that family times have diminished. Somewhere down the line, we start to wonder how we grew to be apart.
Relationships that require great efforts to build mutate into marriages and then require great efforts to break up again. Is it possible for anyone to love me more than i love myself? is it possible to love 2 equally? is it possible to love one and be attracted to another? is there more to life than what the eyes can see? a life without these ironies would be like a life without arts

thoughts,,,,

Sense of direction impaired, feels like I'm groping in darkness. Intentions and actions are not in equity hence a deficit in fulfillment. I've got only one firsthand experience on growing up and I already think there should be a third option, none of the above. It sucks when certainty starts to seem like a fake orgasm all along, but I guess had I known the eventuality all along I wouldn't be bothering, would I? Be good or be good at it? I comfortably satisfy both but they don't certify me. Some people take for granted the good done them because they feel posing that front will make the good keep coming, of course we know the rest of them that just don't think u've done them enough to warrant gratitude at all. In desperation to hear from above, some people stack all their chips on the first voice in their head, others hear a series of voices termed ideas, thereby fulfilling one of their characteristics of being Godlike. This, science never propheced despite its practices being a testament to this power of creation those voices in one's head wield. A devastating self realisation e.g. Discovering you are gay, is way better than self ignorance or indulgences that conflict with the self because from that moment onwards, you will never do that which will discomfort u. Let me be the first to confess to some indecent indulgences, vices, habits and the like that I might have picked up along the course of my life. They all form part of my education or miseducation as the case may be. This exposure to diverse content, and the sifting through to identify that which u deem useful is really what education is about. School, class, and those other things similar to them is just academics. The flaw in the academic system is that it can only shape how u think from without, it can't actually teach u how to think. Ask a million people what the theme of their thoughts are and u will get a million different subject detail. This is the assurance that we will never run out of content as exposure to the different thoughts will provoke other thoughts. Are we still thinking in the 234 side of the world? Since I asked, please indulge me by responding.

20 what?

I can't shout, its 2011 and woofers amplify the voice better. We talk of change like its a stage or a moment when what it really is is a process, a period of failing but persisting at changing the way we behave, react to situations, and generally comport ourselves as individuals, personalities, or organisations. When we talk about this change, we should bear in mind that an engine that's not broken doesn't need fixing. Before we go about fixing it(if it is broken), we first diagnose where the problem is before we embark on fixing. Diagnosing the problem leads to knowing what the theme for change is. In the human personality perspective, it is knowing what portion of our character component we need to correct as a result of the fact that we are not satisfied with the response we've gotten on the subject from people or other media by which we undertake our self assessments as individuals. To ignore the negative response or result of the other medium of assessment is to remain stagnant and handicapped in some situations whichever way we choose to look at it from. We are not preaching acceptance or validation from others, we are just saying since you can't see yourself and we can, since I can't see myself and you can, your/my objective judgement(I.e. void of sentiment) would be a valuable source of data collection for my self assessment. That is not to say that you should not take a critical personal analysis of the feedback we are getting before discarding or basing the need for change on this data. In essence, that 'I don't give a hoot' attitude, we off'd that a while ago, if you're still on that then you need a change of calendar.........