Never despise the cradle

The cradle nurse

Each day consists of learning little or rather consequential lessons, the little ones however are some you just note and make amends for without thinking too much about what that entailed.

In one case, recently, I learnt two things about my Bluetooth earpiece, the Plantronics PLV Voyager 5200, I have had it for about 5 years, and it is usually on the cradle case and fully charged. Then there was a week when I left the earpiece separate from the cradle case which has an in-built battery.

I found out that even though the earpiece was switched off, it had discharged, I placed it in the cradle case and put it in my pocket and just over an hour later, the earpiece had a 5-hour charge duration. Even I was surprised that all the while I had the earpiece, I had never observed this situation.

The cradle keep

Then, the other day, I took the headpiece for an outing but did not take the cradle case with me. After my conversation, I took off the earpiece and put it in my pocket without it being in the cradle case. When I got back home, the ear tip had come off, and when I put it back together, it was loose, I found out that the foam washer that held it in place had also come off, damaged by a cut to the washer ring.

I could have sworn I had spare ear tips, but I could not find them where I thought they were, no matter where I looked. I decided I needed to replace them, and they seemed to be quite inexpensive, so I ordered a new set of ear tips, a set of 3. I guess the lesson here is always to keep the earpiece in the cradle case when not in use and switched off and on it when set aside but switched on for usage.

Opinion: The humiliation of Donald Trump is a lesson well taught

Expected no less

When Donald Trump stated 4 years ago that he would only accept the results of the election if he won, we should have taken his word for it and believed that if a situation warranted his loss he would be curmudgeonly, nasty, unsportsmanlike, and completely intolerable.

Here we are, two weeks after the elections, having been trounced in both the popular vote and the electoral college, he is nowhere near accepting the fact that he lost to the man he nicknamed Sleepy Joe. There is no telling what it would take for him to accept defeat, but such is the character of a man of no virtue worthy of emulation that became the 45^th President of the United States of America.

A nasty piece of work

He has railed with disgusting vituperation, maligning the people and institutions that have volunteered to determine the express will of the people that have regardless of the numbers he has now, rejected him by giving the majority of their support to Joe Biden. That he cannot accept the fact that he has ended up second best in a country where he incessantly stoked division rather than unity just beggars belief.

When Chris Krebs, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency contradicted the president by categorically stating that the elections were the most secure ever in history, he was terminated with immediate effect. Donald Trump is flailing and fuming, poisoning the waters, and undermining the sacrosanct traditions of the country for his own personal ends, whilst complete oblivious of how good the country has been to him and recognising the honour of being asked to serve.

He did not rise to lead

Some even suggest that were it not for the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, he would have won the election. I beg to differ, being president is not an easy throne, and though some have taken office without as much as an event in their tenure that they have been unremarkable, the test of leadership is the ability and capacity to rise to the challenge and the occasion. Donald Trump neither acknowledged the severity of the pandemic nor rose to the challenge of managing and containing it.

With a death toll exceeding 248,000 on his watch, justice would not have been done if he were rewarded with another term after that debacle of indifference, incompetence, apathy and quite possibly sociopathy. He governed like a reality television celebrity, campaigning and holding rallies with his incoherent spiel from the time of his inauguration to the day before the election, speak mainly to his base rather than to the broader American people.

Good riddance to rubbish

I cannot wait to see him gone, he was a bad omen to the world even though the religious right and right-wing groups appeared to embrace him. He represented the basest of our instincts, the least palatable expression, a manifestation of megalomania and ego, mirroring the worst of values, conduct, etiquette, and manners. If you did not want to try to be good, considerate, courteous, respectful, understanding, and accepting of others, Donald Trump gave you how to channel the vicissitudes of inhumanity without scruples.

His complete humiliation cannot be soon enough whenever he concedes or he is bundled out of the White House. For an example should be made that kind of person for a lesson that we should always strive to be good-natured, kind, empathetic, engaging and nice. To his sort, a chapter must be closed in the history of the United States of America and Good Riddance will not have fully given vent to the glee of his defeat.

Thought Picnic: The privilege of attending good schools

Catching a wish

As I leaf through my back catalogue of The Week news magazines many of which I have not read, but I have settled on February into March, the news stories are probably stale but the perspectives give an interesting insight into how people expected things to turn and how reality turned out.

For instance, in Issue 1266 of the 15^th of February, the market view suggested, ‘“There’s a growing view in financial markets that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.” Kit Juckes of Société Générale on hopes that the coronavirus outbreak might be plateauing. Quoted in the Financial Times.’ With hindsight, that now appears to have been wishful thinking for on the 11^th of March the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 coronavirus a pandemic. [WHO]

Summaries of the dead

There are many sections in The Week magazine, but this is not the blog for that topic, however, I read the full-page obituary of Issur Danielovitch, 103, whose life is definitely a story of note, it would go into my encyclopaedia of useless knowledge that comes in useful when making conversation with strangers somewhere. Yes, as your brow furrowed, that was the birth name of Kirk Douglas. [The New York Times – Subscriber access]

The next issue I picked up which I read partway through had two personalities in the Obituaries section, the first, Harry Gregg, OBE, 87, a former Manchester United goalkeeper who was a survivor and hero of the Munich air disaster where he rescued an infant and her pregnant mother as well as some of his teammates. [Guardian]

Yet, it is Wilfred De’Ath, 82, whose obituary had the most interesting story to tell as I read it. The heading read “Scrounger and vagrant who found fame through The Oldie.” It made me wonder what he could have done to deserve the exclusive real estate of a half-page reference in The Week magazine.

Good school plaudits

It got me thinking about why it was necessary to attend a very good school as part of the academic and life development. Whilst no knowledge is lost regardless of the school you attend, how the quality of school attended can set you up for life cannot be underestimated. For me, it would be my primary school education and then my postgraduate studies.

Now, The Week magazine touts itself as “The best of all media in one magazine”, it is an aggregator or rather, a curator of media from newspapers, magazines and journals from all around the globe for the week of publication, editing, abridging and excerpting articles, opinions, reviews, and schedules into a weekly magazine that I find a bit more informative than The Economist.

Wilfred De’Ath was of Huguenot and German descent, he attended Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, ranked as one of the most academically successful secondary schools in England before going on to Oriel College, Oxford. He then became the youngest ever producer at the BBC, aged just 23, where he shared an office with the now Lord Melvyn Bragg. [The Oldie – Wilfred De’Ath columns] [The Oldie – 80^th Birthday interview]

Going places

He worked with and interviewed many public figures, he was a well-connected man, moving in rarefied circles until a divorce and libel suit cost him his life savings. He chose to be a scrounger and vagrant, lived between England and France, stealing from church collection boxes and going to jail for leaving hotels without settling his bills. He appeared to enjoy the court appearances.

His apparent big break came when an Oxford contemporary offered him a column in The Oldie magazine that he was described as “a George Orwell for our times.” In the excerpted obituary, having set up home in Cambridge, he neither reformed nor repented, whilst still earning a reputation as a respected columnist.

Never belittle the small

This made me think about how many people we see dishevelled and unkempt who could have an interesting backstory, smart and intelligent that you’re left astounded if you engage them. In chatting to my mum a few days ago, I mentioned a neighbour from our ancestral village that no one had time for, the reviled Iya Soye, who at the break of dawn, was fully inebriated and staggering, always having an audible conversation with herself.

There were times I met and respectfully acknowledged her, we managed a conversation out of which were gems of wisdom and good sense, the lifelong lesson I took from those encounters was everyone has a story and you should expect to be surprised at what you might learn from people judged, stigmatised, castigated, or reviled.

Other school benefits

Then on the schools' side, some of the best friends we would ever make would be in school, whilst I do not retain close friendships from my secondary school, I am in regular contact with an acquaintance from primary school and my best friend is from my time in a polytechnic in 1984.

Furthermore, it is how the privilege of a good education which builds character moulded to your personality and your outlook to life to open doors before you by force of talent, association, opportunity, fortune, luck, or fate. He was not afraid to be reckless, the law did not scare him, he has well-written views, he knew himself and couldn’t care less what others thought about him.

Life is what you make it, with paths going in different and sometimes unpredictable ways. In the end, your obituary might just find someone writing a blog about things they learnt from how you lived.

How climbing up the rungs of failure was my ladder to a successful career

Thoughts on how I was taught

If I had the charm and the gab, I probably would be in a professionally different place, but it really does not bother me, I love what I do.

It is strange that in deciding on a career, the many ideas that came to me were not so inspired by some passion, but by example, the example of the passions or decisions of others. I dreamt of being a brain surgeon or an avionics engineer, I never really caught the bug for the grades, especially in additional mathematics, my teachers did not have the tinder that when lit caused me to combust to a cinder.

How I would have loved to master French, I was teaching myself from a book in primary school until we landed in the cane-wielding tutelage in Mr Okonji in secondary school, his sadistic pleasure was to see us parrot French phrases contorted in pain from the beating he generously administered urging us to study. His nickname became Study-Study, he was a nasty piece of work and a bad teacher.

Wailings and failings

After secondary school, I toyed with the idea of Quantity Surveying after a brilliant uncle but ended up on a Chemical Engineering course by the persuasion of an old student. I did not get far with the course; one lecturer was so German in speech and mannerism than to be understood and more than half the class failed mathematics that the engineering department had to lay out special classes to pull us up.

Gbenga Daniel who eventually became the governor of Ogun State was the acting Head of Department and besides learning chess and playing Scrabble, I made nothing of that year. I, however, learnt enough to realise that I was more interested in Electrical Engineering as a gateway to electronics and computing, so as I failed that year and was asked to withdraw, I was admitted as almost the youngest in the class at another more prestigious polytechnic.

After three years there, student politics, religion and somewhat undiagnosed depression, 4 years after secondary school I had no further paper qualification beyond secondary school in Nigeria where the comparison with other failures was the persuasive force towards greater achievement. I was a lost child.

Mentored by one who knew the way

A year out and away from the overbearing influence of my very successful parents, but a ward of an uncle who knew failure young and with luck, good fortune and opportunity had become one of the leading insurers in Nigeria, I began to build my life again, not out of comparison to other failures, but in the spirit of knowing what could be possible for me, if I put my heart and mind to it.

The belief in me, culled the depression, managed the anxiety, emboldened my daring and sense of adventure and though, on my first day back at school, my junior in secondary school was 3 years ahead of me, I neither flinched nor shirked, I faced what I had to do, with dignity and purpose. The little detail that this junior was the very person I first wielded the power of secondary school seniority on, was a minor lesson of karma that I refused to allow consume me.

This was my second spring, no more the youngest in class that I had been from primary school through secondary school into two years of school after, I was a mature student with more knowledge of how tertiary education worked than most of my colleagues. I led the class, represented my colleagues and brooked no nonsense from either veteran students or lectures. Some came to respect the confidence and authority I exuded. In controversy, I was as measured as I was revolutionary, persuading rather than being confrontational. It served me well.

Mastery in immersion

I graduated with good grades, 7 years after secondary school and I landed in a job market without the influence peddling or favours I once could call upon out of the patronage of my father or the precociousness of my youth. Well shod for the roads of Lagos, with the choice of the industrial motors or stepper motors, I chose the latter and every computer outfit I could find I walked into asking for a job.

I had decided, I was the only one who could best represent myself and that is how I walked into this building that housed IT Systems and I was offered a job there and then. Like a sponge for knowledge, I learnt all I could about Personal Computers, repaired circuit boards, fixed software problems, taught myself desktop publishing and within a year, I went into self-employment consultancy and no one thought was a smart thing to do.

It was the smartest thing I ever did, it is strange to know that in 29 years of working in the computer industry, I have only been in permanent employment for 7 years, I suppose I have never been a corporation man, like my father was or anyone else that could have been a mentor, I was also not an apparatchik, my entrepreneurial skills are hardly top notch, but I hope I have been able to sell a skill that helps organisations achieve goals of efficiency, usability and affordability of computer solutions.

Questioning and listening

That is what I enjoy about my job, big problems reduced to simple solutions, thinking in ways that could be silly, mad and interesting, being the clown and exhibiting the furrows of a frown and then we go to town with something of renown. In large and small firms, meeting with people from all walks of life, I have made many friends and encountered the occasional prick of a manager, probably twice.

I guess that is part of the occupational hazard that weaves into a raconteur’s milieu. In that, I looked forward to new challenges, the opportunity to tackle a new subject, meet new people and craft amazing solutions. I am still excited when something works as it should and tenacious when things do not produce the expected results until they do.

My curiosity still has that childlike inquisitiveness, I have questions, I seek answers and much as I can be a fresh pair of eyes, those eyes come with eager to listen ears, each new day is fresh for learning things, tricks, truths and tips. Sometimes, it looks like I stumbled into this career, maybe I was right on course, just not by well-trodden paths.