March 2014 – You'll thank me later

Be who you are. Not who you want people to think you are

I remember when I was much younger you would get social acceptance from what you had. Be it the latest shoes, watch or enough money to go and eat and drink at certain places. Sometimes I would find myself subconsciously thinking “I wish I had that…”. To be honest, there was an element of jealousy to it when I was a teenager (I miss those days. Being old sucks [said the 29 year old]). At that time I didn’t realise the fact that everyone is at different stages. There really is no fascination about what someone has. So what to be honest.

There are some traits that I hate in the human race. The one I hate the most is blatant arrogance. I am not going to talk about why I hate it as this is not the subject matter. The other trait that I hate is one that I was reminded about a few days by someone who I used to consider to be my friend. That is the show off. At my humble young age of 29, telling people in a bar very loudly about what I have and what I have achieved is something that is not done. Who am I trying to impress? Gone are the days that rattling on about what countries you had been to or what you did gives you any greater social standing (as far as I am concerned). In fact as far as I am concerned it shows a very one dimensional aspect to a person.

Why do people brag? Why do they embellish stories? Ultimately we are a silly species. Sometimes we do things because it makes us feel better that we are above other people. It a bit late in life for that now. We all have various things that we have done or are doing that have gotten us to where we are. My bank balance doesn’t make me who I am. I would like to hope that all the experiences I have had in life with my family and friends make me who I am.

The thing is about the show off, he or she is generally not that bright. They may be smart, but they are not bright. The problem is they spend so much time trying to make people say “Wow!!! he’s amazing/hard worker/big spender/achiever”, that they end up tripping over their own feet in the hope of trying to make themselves sound to be amazing/hard worker/big spender/achiever. They will probably never be able to stop themselves because as they go on with these exaggerated and sometimes untrue stories, they probably start to believe their own delusions of grandeur.

Now before you shout at me for being so hard on “the show off”, there are two kinds. There is the one who generally has access to buying and doing amazing things, and talks about those things. That show off is a little more bearable. Ultimately all I can say is “keep doing what you are doing.”. The other kind of show off is the one who says things that don’t make logical and mathematical sense. Now this is the show off that I can’t stand. This particular person who I am referring to is the second kind.

In my expert medical opinion (I have been practicing and qualified for all of 0 years), this is a trait that is as a result of the inability to actually fit in to social situations. Now I think it is something that is very acceptable as a teenager. I see teenager walking around in groups and I always sit there and scratch my head wondering what they talk to each about. Hell, I can’t remember what we used to talk about when I was a teenager.

As an adult, it is a little more than “I just bought a car worth more than $30,000. It’s outside. I did it all by myself with my hard work. Can you imagine? It was paid for one time, from my produce. My produce. That’s how successful I am at the moment.”. My response in my head is “So what? What is the point of sharing? Why are you sharing? Because I haven’t bought a car like that now, does that mean that I am a failure?”. I stopped and realized that it wasn’t me with the problem. I was fine actually. I am healthy, I am happy. Why would he be making it a point to obnoxiously share his success?

Ultimately you can’t spend your life trying to impress other people by telling stories that don’t have 100% truth. You are better off shutting up and sitting down. Life is not a sprint, neither is it a race. It is, a very long journey. Some will get to the end of their race sooner than other. However we will all know when you get to the end of your race.

It’s absurd to divide people into good and bad. They are either charming or tedious – Oscar Wilde

When Ideas Run Out

I decided that I needed WordPress to remind me once a week that I was due a blog. Not because I actually needed the reminder. It was just nice every now and again to have something telling me that I should come online during work and put something up that is semi meaningful, hopefully kinda funny and most of all a little bit thought provoking. I was convinced that I would have something to talk about by now. All the conversations that I have had clearly have not been interesting enough for me to remember them and to reproduce them here.

So I figure that this must be a little what writers block feels like. The complete and utter lack of inspiration to build a world that you imagined. If this was my case of writers block, I just wanna say I am happy that I at LEAST started. I would have now run out of ideas close to Chapter 4 of 8 (I doubt I would write long books if I did). Of course the genre of my book would beyond me. I am sure it would be some silly futuristic zombie-pocalyptic action comedy with superheroes. I mean can you imagine being chased by a zombie wolverine…

Damn he’s frightening enough, now you wanna make him wanna eat you? I don’t know how I got on to this, but I think it’s a good start for my blog.

ZOMBIE SUPERHEROES

I am going to give you a list of superheroes and which ones you would best avoid when they are the zombies that we are running away from.

Zombie Wolverine – As I said earlier, he is already feral and slightly unhinged. I mean, would you be friends with a guy who couldn’t get drunk, aged really slowly and also have metal laced to his bones with claws that come out of his hands that can cut through just about anything? Then you wanna make him into a blood thirsty mindless zombie? I think even other zombies would be afraid of him. AVOID
Zombie Xavier – Now he would be fun. He already can’t walk. If you could strap him to his chair so he cant turn round and chomp you, chances are he would confuse all the other zombies and go into their heads and give them mixed signals. TURN IN TO PET
Zombie Jean Grey – Well this is interesting. Technically as Jean she could become a zombie. If she was Dark Phoenix as a zombie, the world would come to an end so quick that no one would even realise that we once existed. I am sure she would eat the planet, or make in implode or something. That would be a here today gone 3 milliseconds later. NOT MUCH YOU CAN DO

All in all its clear that if the X-Men come to town as Zombies… Not even ‘Murica will be able to save us!!!

Shout out!

I wanna give a quick shout out to all my followers! The one’s who know me and I know what they look like and the one’s who don’t know me from around the world. Thanks for the taking the time to listen to my incoherent rambles!!!!!

School after School

So as some of you know or don’t know, I have decided to further my education and have gone back to studying. It’s a totally different experience going as a mature student, with other mature students. My experience as an undergrad was probably one of the most bizarre ones. Being in a new city (London), the whole concept of university was just foreign to me. I was so used to the high school mentality that I had all my friends nearby, some lived in my neighborhood, and a few I had to drive to see. Also this was in Harare, which to be honest is a growth point. The fact that you can drive from one side of the city to another in under 30min and 40km says it all.

All of a sudden I was thrust into the concrete jungle FULL of people from EVERYWHERE and to be honest it was quite daunting. I would show you my student picture, but it is a shocker. For a reason that I will share another time, the day before enrollment I slept in a car in the car park for where we had just moved to in London…. it was a cold ass night.

I was a very reclusive person for the first and half of the second semester at university. In fact I didn’t have any friends on my course. I used to eat my lunch on my own, hardly spoke to people, barely went to the uni bar. I actually used to play with one of my friends who I went to high school with whose university just happened to be right behind mine. I eventually made friends with a few people on my course in the last few weeks of the second semester of my first year who are now quite dear to me. The main reason for this is that my degree forced me to do a presentation with them. We were forced to work together and then eventually socialise.

It’s not like I’m socially awkward (as far as I am concerned) or that I can’t make friends. I think at that time I didn’t really know how to make new friends and that’s why I didn’t make much of an effort and was happy just in my own little bubble.

So you can imagine that when I started my diploma there were many of the same feelings of anxiety. I walked into the class and I was convinced that I would have to deal with the same old strained conversations about things, trying to find familiarity where it clearly wasn’t and eventually getting so frustrated you decide to just give up and sit in a corner, earphones in place and ignore the rest of the class…

My immediate thoughts when I got into class

But then something amazing happened. As I was in a room of adults, everyone behaved like adults. We all greeted each other, asked each other where they worked, what they did, didn’t have superficial conversations about what they did on the weekend (mainly coz we spend our weekend in class so we don’t have much of a weekend), some people grumbled about the HR managers, their procurement managers and generally normal things.

Ultimately I am there to get an education and not to make friends. If I do become friends with anyone then that will be an added bonus. The one thing I learnt is that school is something that you can do at any age. As you get older, your priorities change. It is going to be an interesting experience over the next year. If I find the time, I will keep you updated as the goings on.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught – Oscar Wilde

An Ode to Stairs and Tongues

Oh Dominic, oh Dominic. This dude managed to try and kill the internets. Him and his female companion. Who would have thought that the best place to engage in a sexual act of LUDICROUS proportions would be a some steps just off a street. I mean, they could have waited till they got home, or waited for a car. Instead, he was happy for his female companion to sit on his face… in the street. I mean, I get that sometimes people can get sexually frustrated, but this is just too much. There are so many other ways that one can release that stress. Go to a strip club. No cameras are allowed in there. No one will ever know (apart from you, the adult entertainers, the bar tenders, the waiters, the dj, the bouncers, the cashier AND the other patrons) that you were there. Not the way that the internets know know who Dominc Celaire is. When I first received the video of their actions, I must admit that I was quite shocked at the speed that his female counter part got up and departed after discovery.

Now there are various lines of thought regarding this whole situation. Who convinced who to do that in public? If it was her, then she is of low moral standing. If it WAS her, he is also of low moral standing to agree to doing it. Like I have heard of drunken decisions that turn out to be the wrong one to make. Some have greater ramifications than others. This was just poor man…

Negroes around the world frown upon him,…

It does seem like a bit of a set up. Either that or he was SO engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t realise that there was the possibility of a pedestrian walking by, getting their camera out and trying to break the internet. It is people like this who will always remind me that the human race has a LOOOONNNGGG way to go before aliens agree to come and help us advance closer to the future.

All in all what we can learn from this incident is that if a woman proposes stairs and tongues, then she is of a questionable nature. If the man makes the suggestion, he is of a questionable nature. For the two of them to agree that its a good idea is a match made in Heaven. To Dominic Celaire and Laila Habib – Get a room!!!

Whoever told you that this YOLO was the way forward, forgot to tell you what it was like when you lived twice – Tongai Matenga

The Breakdown of Society

I have to start by apologizing to my friend Chipo as she had requested that I blog about something else.

So recently there was a video that was sent to me on WhatsApp. As a regular WhatsApp user I didn’t think twice, and downloaded the video onto my phone. I just assumed that it was a joking video that I was sent as that is the norm in the various groups that I am part of on WhatsApp. In fact it turned out to be something that I cannot share on my blog as it may constitute to being some thing (not even borderline) illegal.

It shows four school kids from here in Zimbabwe, one girl and three boys (and one filming, looking rather intoxicated) and engaging in what I would describe as unacceptable behavior. The girl is being fondled and is semi topless. It is poor behavior ultimately. What makes this worse is that everyone in the video bar one person are under 16. The one who is older than 16 is 18.

As what happens with most of the things that I blog here, I took this content to the forum where I discuss most of the things that I blog here. The bar. I opened it up and asked what other peoples thoughts were about the video. I must say that all of the responses were the ones that I agreed with bar one.

One individual said that “they are teenagers and that’s how they have fun.” As far as I am concerned that is not the kid of fun that I would want my kids to be having. It can’t be considered a norm for one girl to be drunken and being fondled by three guys. Bare in mind that the video itself does not show what happened throughout the whole outing.

Where were the parents when this happened? Why did the girl agree to go and be left alone with four guys? Was it her idea? There are so many burning questions. It seems as though the moral fiber of this country is slowly but surely unraveling. As far as I am concerned, if the girl (replace girl with child) was engaging in the same behavior at the age of 22-25, then maybe she has decided that is what she wants to do. As far as I am concerned she has made a decision as an adult. Then we go down the road that she is essential made her choice. I doubt that at the age of 15 going on 16 she made an informed decision and decided that this is what she wanted to do.

What is furthermore disturbing is that my cousin takes youths at church. These youths were saying that this has been happening for some time and the only difference is that this particular story has come to light because it was recorded.

So what is the problem? Yes we are in a very weird situation in Zimbabwe. There are some parents who are making bucket loads of money (legally or illegally. That is another story). But providing everything and more that your child wants is not enough. Making sure that your child can drive to school, has money to shop and go out with their friends doesn’t equip them with the moral standing that is necessary to survive. I am not a parent, but I have seen a different sort of generation growing up in this country. A generation of disrespectful kids, who have an entitlement issue worse than any millennial in the first world. Kids who don’t ask for things, but kids who demand.

As hard working as these parents may be, it will result in a generation of uncontrollable and irresponsible adults who don’t know how to actually make it from Monday to Wednesday without demanding a new toy. At the same time they do not appreciate the hard work (legal or illegal) their parents are doing. I shudder to imagine the offspring that they will bring into this world.

It is not a perfect world, but the one ultimate things that we all have to realize is that if we don’t try and protect kids, who will? We can argue that the girl is of no moral standing for letting herself into that situation, that the guys influenced her with alcohol and maybe drugs. Yes sure the boys who were there are of NO moral standing whatsoever. These kinds of situations have to be stopped from every continuing.

If I was a father and I heard about this story, and the girl in the video was my daughters best friend, I know that I would be shook down to my bones. If it was my sons friends who had engaged in these acts, I know that I would have a big problem.

Kids need to be protected at all cost. We are not the future. They are. They will be here long as we are gone.

The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it. The best way to create it is together