Saturday 21 March 2009

Hot Chocolate


I sit and stare as your steam rises

I watch your foam trickle down

With fumbling fingers I trace its path

and bring your sweet taste to my mouth

I dip my thumb into your cream

I stir the froth and feel your heat

that bubbles like molten lava

from a volcano, underneath.


I bring your cup up to my lips

I run my tongue around your rim

I ease aside your creamy defenses

and dip my tongue into your warm embrace

I sip your nectar with slow precision

I marvel at your heavy richness

a connoisseur sampling a new found taste

finding it so much to my liking

I end with cream around my face.


Much later as you lay, exhausted,

your taste still lingers in my mouth

my tongue still throbbing from its exertions

tingling from your heated responses

I run it slowly around my lips

all the while wondering how long

I must wait to savour

(for you have now made me a junkie)

your sweet nectar and flavour.


Hot Chocolate.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

I am so underwhelmed.......

Last night when I was sitting there minding my own business jeje jeje and praying for Arsenal to beat Hull so we could meet them at Wembley (prefer Arsenal to Hull o. Those Hull boys are too goal hungry for my own liking) when my phone buzzed and I received the following text message. FGN - Nigeria . Good people, great nation. I immediately scanned my phonebook for any Man u supporter with those initials but to no avail. See I thought that since I had sent condolence texts to every Man U supporter I know over their weekend destruction by Liverpool it could have been one of them sending me a text back as a piss take. No luck there. And then I thought maybe it was one of my work colleagues in the UK who had received another one of those 419 mails they are so very happy to discuss with me in great detail every time I happen to be in our HQ. Again no luck. Oh well. Back to the game.

Call me slow sha but after some time it then occured to me that hold on a minute, you didirin, FGN stands for Federal Government of Nigeria. Of course you can understand my slowness after all I am not in the habit of getting mails from the highest levels of the Executive arm. After all I am only a lowly tax paying, law abiding citizen not seeking government contracts or political office. Why in the hell would they want to acknowledge my existence?

So the Minister of Communications and Information is erm communicating with me. She is announcing the winner of the re branding Nigeria exercise. And this is it. Good people. great nation. Wow. Great. But now to more important things. How many yards does William Gallas have to be offside for the linesman to notice him and disallow his goal? I mean how can you miss a six foot black man standing all by himself in front of goal? It is not obvious that he is offside and the goal should be disallowed?

So it was that I lay awake at night tossing and turning with my stomach churning about this turn of events. I mean can you Adam and Eve it (believe) it? How could this happen in this day and age. Great nation. Good people. This is the best that we could do? I mean is this the right time to be rebranding Nigeria anyway? Do you not rebrand when you have introduced a change of some sort (ideally positive) into the old brand. Lets check the facts:

Have any corrupt Governors been tried and jailed recently. No
Has the GDP of the country changed dramatically? No
Has the Naira gained in value? No
Has the living standard of the man on the street been improved? No
Has health care, education, communication, security improved? No
Has the new Minister really thought this through?. No
Has broadband penetration, which falls under the Ministry of Comms improved enough to allow a majority of Nigeria's citizen be able to join the Global village? No
Is this really the best place for the Ministry to be focused in light of a recent one month strike by Nitel that crippled all International comms services into Nigeria due to non payment of their wages for 8 months? No

Hmmm. So basically what we are saying is that things are still as they are but we will call them a new name? Like changing from NEPA to PHCN? We will slap new paint on a derelict house? We will put new seat covers on an abandoned car? And this rebranding exercise will only cost $150m to execute? Bargain (but there is no money ot pay Nitel workers?). For that sort of price we should do it every month.

As for Arsenal. Maybe we could rebrand them as Arse. Has a certain ring to it don't you think? Actually we could use that term for the Nigeria rebranding as well.