Thought Picnic: In showing is the shown showed

Preparing enough for things

Preparation can easily become the excuse we use for not getting some things done. Decisions on what needs to be done and how to get it done whilst trying to ensure once the process has started, it is not impeded by some unintended issue or circumstances.

How this can so quickly exacerbate procrastination is another thing we rarely acknowledge. A task suddenly seems onerous and the path to accomplishment literally insurmountable. The journey of a thousand miles never gets started because we see the thousand miles ahead rather than begin with the first step and see how each step brings us closer to our destination.

Indeed, we must prepare for the obvious even as the clichéd saying sounds in my ear as I write, “Those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” Some knowledge and insight is useful, experience gained from different sources can help too.

Accomplishment must be the goal

The direction of travel should be towards some achievement or accomplishment, bringing things to conclusion or completion would show that whatever effort has been applied to something has something tangible at the end.

Our thoughts are vehicles of many ideas that may never see reality, yet it is our ability to imagine that gives the foundations to the things we build or produce.

The power of the imagination to create worlds of fantasy that become fantastic worlds lived in, is one feature of humanity we fail to exploit and even when we know how the divine can bring to pass the apparently impossible, we limit ourselves to the perfunctory, lost in dreamland with wishes rather than faith.

Showing shows completed activity

The other day, I saw someone with such big ears. I was afraid my thoughts about the ears might be heard by them. I tried not to consider that possibility even if it could be scripted into a science fiction fantasy film with interesting or thrilling storylines.

Then, the many stories or things we have written that never left the draft stage, they are in an incomplete state, they represent activity without accomplishment. We can be satisfied something was done but there is nothing to show others that we have done anything. It is like an assignment done but not submitted for scoring. You cannot get grades for work not given up for vetting.

Likewise, a blog not published is well, not a blog, because no one knows what you have done until it is shown for others to see. So many lights hidden under a bushel, talents buried instead of flourishing makes the reticence to show what you have the gift of not entirely one of shyness that we assume we have but it could also be seen as in the parable of the talents in terms of the unprofitable servant too. {Bible Gateway: Matthew 25:14-30 (NKJV)]

Blog-In-Draft

The ease of unease

Much as I usually speak of the simplicity of writing blogs, I even gave a presentation on that topic a few weeks ago, something I put together in less than 15 minutes. It gave me the impression that I probably have a good idea of the freeform blog, the professional or technical blog still requires a bit more form, function, and finesse.

Yet, this apparent ease of blogging does not lend itself to prolific blogging, then for my kind of output as someone who blogs for pleasure rather than revenue, the length of time of blogging and the frequency of blogging could pass for quite prolific. I should retain a sense of modesty.

Doing without showing

Then I think of the many blogs I could have written in the past week to mark events, observations, and opinions, yet none appeared. The thoughts formed in my head and then ones I tried to start and never completed. Brian does better, not so much as a publisher, he is an excellent writer if only he could be more confident at it. He blogs at Brian’s Point of View.

The majority of his blogs that he writes, he never publishes, he writes like an author who types out half a page of whatever narrative, pulls it out of the typewriter, scrunches the paper into a ball to throw into a basket that I bet he misses more times than he gets it in at the first attempt.

Getting beyond Blog-In-Draft

He is the master of the Blog-In-Draft, sketches, doodles, scribbles, and scratches of thought with a prospect that does not see the light of day. He is not a fantasist or a daydreamer, I have to prod him relentlessly to get him to publish and because he hardly does, when he does, I might see the blog days or even weeks after he has published.

I might even speak out of turn and get caught out, I am asking for a blog to be published and I am the one who has not been current. I still believe everyone has ideas, insights, and inspiration to write interesting blogs, if they can take the Blog-In-Draft out of their heads, type out what they have to say, they can publish and later even refine it.

There, we have a blog on the Blog-In-Draft. That is probably the more interesting thing about freeform blogging. You can write about anything and begin the conversation on something. We all have a blog in us, we just need to write it and publish it.

On comments without root

A dump of verbiage

Looking through the hundreds of comments awaiting moderation on my blog, I could not help but wonder why some people bother. There are scores that are just hackneyed and trite never venturing to platitude, effusive with mock praise and uninteresting, a cat could have walked one their keyboard for a minute and produced commendable prose.

Others are completely off-topic bearing no relationship to the blog, adjacent blogs or my blog in general, whether visitors in a heightened state of psychoactive abandon are attracted to my blog, I cannot say, but by what has been written, I might just be on the money.

Spam you can’t can

However, more annoying are those who insert links to plug their businesses in my comments section, it is spam, no more no less. I have no advertisements on my blog, I make no money off it, it is a personal space that is open to readership whilst managed by me. I cannot edit the comments and I doubt I will grant permission if asked, to publish adverts on my blog.

I do write reviews and that is a different activity because it is one of personal experience with objective or subjective viewpoints and let us agree it is authentic.

Thanks for coming

Now, feedback on my blogs is welcome, I encourage it within the bounds of courtesy, respect, context, and contributions that extend the debate. As abuse and expletives are not my mode of expression such aggressive deployment of language will hardly be entertained or countenanced. One owns the prerogative to publish or delete, a rejoinder might well appear on you blog with a link to mine, if you want more control of the narrative.

I provide Comment advisory and guidelines to help towards making your contribution meaningful and worthy of publishing to my audience. Thank you for engaging and I will try my best to engage too.

Berlin: With friends at the Graphic Novel Day

Needs be done

My visit to Berlin in the weekend presented an unscheduled opportunity to provide some moral support to a few friends of mine at an event they were present for.

I had found out through a posting on Facebook that Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, the publisher of Cassava Republic, Sylvia Ofili (She needs a Wikipedia page) and Elnathan John were going to be at the 15^th International Literature Festival.

Through collaborations with the Goethe Institute in Lagos, Sylvia and Elnathan were working with graphic artists to create two graphic novels based on themes of the boarding school experience and the coming out of a young man respectively.

As graphic as it comes

Before their presentation, we listened to Wiktoria Lomasko’s presentation titled “Opposition with the Pencil” where as a Russian, the recent retrogressive reforms to the freedom of expression in Russia had put people like her in fear and threat of persecution and prosecution.

She and her collaborators had found ingenious ways to critique the system through art and illustrations, it then dawned on us how the stifling of opposition and other voices in the public space in Russia could never be a welcome development in the 21^st Century. The allotted hours was not long enough for her piece which was translated from Russian to English, but we began to understand what forces of repression the Putin government brings to bear on alternative thought.

The Nigerian graphic novel

In their presentation titled Imagined Realities, they discussed the inspiration, drive and collaborative difficulties in creating graphic novels and conveying ideas between cultures and distance that meets the expectations of sponsors and publishers alike, whilst opening up a new interest groups and readerships in Nigeria and beyond.

Knowing Sylvia as a writer of socially diverse topical issues and Elnathan as a novelist and satirist, I was quite intrigued by this new direction of storytelling they were charting, both ventures will be completed within a year.

Significant social media friends

Bibi, Elnathan and Slyvia were friendships I formed through social media from my blogging to Twitter. I first met Bibi just over 4 years ago when she was visiting Amsterdam for a few days, Sylvia was reading my blog when I was in hospital in September 2009, and she sent me a large bouquet of flowers on my first day of chemotherapy, the 5^th of October 2009 then visited me in Amsterdam in December.

We last met in October 2010 in Stockholm. I first met Elnathan in Berlin in June 2015 at Ebe Ano (More talk about that in another blog.) We have met again in London before this new meeting in Berlin again.

After their session, we retired to the author’s tent for a few hours of catching and reminiscing, if they had not been partying too hard the night before, we might well have had another rendezvous at Ebe Ano.

Nigeria: Reviewing the Nigeria @ 50 website

The Nigeria @ 50 website is live

Having made such an issue of the absence of a website celebrating Nigeria’s 50^th Independence anniversary, the website finally made an appearance yesterday, only 3 days to the celebrations itself.

When I wrote in July about the unpreparedness of the government for celebrations we all knew for years would be in October 2010, I noted that Ghana had revealed their own Ghana @ 50 website a good 5 months before the event.

Though the logo for the occasion had been unveiled since the 9^th of June 2010, it was the most elusive brand as if it was kept under wraps only to be seen by freemasonry and starved of the oxygen of publicity despite the fact that we have had a rebranding Nigeria exercise going for over a year.

No excuses would suffice

Some might blame the tardiness and unpreparedness on the seeming interregnum that typified the sickness of the erstwhile President Yar’Adua as he vegetated in Saudi Arabia from November 2009 and haunted the corridors of power from February 2010 until he passed on to the great beyond in May 2010.

It did not stop the incessant politicking in the corridors of power so by inference someone should still have been manning the project regardless of whether the President was present or absent – it was business as usual and to state otherwise would be a lame excuse.

Wanting and unfinished

In any case, the Nigeria @ 50 website has come online and whilst it might be aesthetically pleasing to the eye on the rudiments of adhering to the green and white colours of the flag and other symbols of the country the content was wanting in the essential qualities of worldwide web publishing.

Errors borne from the lack of proofreading, poor checking of facts, suspect references and outright lack of finesse simply made to reinforce the idea that Nigerians are no good at exactness, correctness, rigour and meticulousness – it is a shame that what was worth doing well was done so badly.

Websites are sandboxes?

As to what was paid to create the website, I would suppose someone forgot to separate the cost of hosting from the need for talent, artistry and professionalism in creating a possible global reference for Nigeria in its hour and time of revelation in celebrating its Golden Jubilee of independence.

There seems to be a dismissive view to creating a web presence forgetting the fact that a website presence is probably now the first impression you can give of who you are, what you do, how you project whilst giving the visitor to your website an opinion of whether they can do business with you in the broadest terms.

The fact that some people can comment saying their 10-year old nephews or nieces can do better is as much a damning statement as a disgrace to those who awarded that contract without appreciating what it entails and those who commissioned the Go-live of that site without scrutiny of its contents.

My views in Tweets

To say I am disappointed does not begin to express my views, but throughout yesterday night as I reviewed the website I think the Tweets I posted give a general idea of how exasperated I became.

On finding the logo and then realising I had seen it before but never cottoned on the fact that it was the official logo.

forakin Akin Akintayo

Thanks to @fowora The #nigeria50 logo http://bit.ly/8Yugaq has been found with pictures of old leaders to boot. Thanks!

The first thing that jumped out at me as I read the brief history of Nigeria.

forakin Akin Akintayo

http://is.gd/fxKjv I am sorry to say, Emeka Ojukwu was a Colonel when Biafra seceded, it is within Biafra that he became General.

The House of Fun where the legislators earn perks that make the eyes water – no job in the world offers such benefits as being a Nigerian legislator, but as a tourist attraction or the Nigerian English version called “Toursim”? I am speechless.

forakin Akin Akintayo

http://is.gd/fy7qK The Nigerian National Assembly is apparently a tourist attraction but pray what is Toursim?

An aside as to how every little hamlet became a state of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which in my view offers many pools but few talents to select from those pools.

forakin Akin Akintayo

Wikipedia States of #Nigeria http://is.gd/fy8Qk A nice graphic of how every hamlet became a state.

This shook me a bit because all the references came from Wikipedia; it begs the question whether Nigeria has a national archive of authoritative facts of history beyond the crowd-sourced data on Wikipedia. If we do have archives, they should be online and must be the first points of reference by our government.

forakin Akin Akintayo

Going through the brief history of Nigeria http://is.gd/fxKjv All references are from Wikipedia, don't we have a national archive of events?

The fact that Nigerians live in a patriarchal society without the due recognition of women is exemplified in our having only founding fathers and God knows women were just as involved in the independence process.

forakin Akin Akintayo

Nigeria @ 50 website http://is.gd/fya4N Surely there were women in the struggle for our independence not just Founding Fathers.

To prove that point Sokari Ekine had written a blog on women and the nation for the Nigeria @ 50 celebrations.

forakin Akin Akintayo

@Blacklooks wrote a Nigeria @ 50 piece on Women and the Nationhttp://is.gd/fyayY Shame on the male chauvinists forgetting the worthy women.

It gets to a point that only sarcasm can help you through viewing this stuff, especially, if you have no hairs to pull out. A lack of consistency in the product, I wonder why we lack of sense of precision and uniformity in many things.

forakin Akin Akintayo

Founding Fathers of Nigeria page http://is.gd/fya4N leaves Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa without beginning or end, a Melchizedek of sorts.

A critical point in the discussions of Nigerian independence, the meetings were held at Lancaster House, but rather than check and verify the facts, someone put in Lancester twice as captions of photographs. It is unbelievable.

forakin Akin Akintayo

I think I have had it with the errors on this Nigeria @ 50 website - The London Conference was at Lancaster House. http://is.gd/fyc7n

Whilst indeed Lord Lugard was in West Africa in the late 19^th Century, the key point of the historical event being portrayed which was the naming of Nigeria by his beau Miss Fiona Shaw was done in the early 20^th Century – getting this wrong is just beyond the pale.

forakin Akin Akintayo

Nigeria @ 50 http://is.gd/fyd4b Fact Sheet says Baron Lugard was Colonial Administrator in late 19th Century, no it was early 20th Century.

How much?

Which brought the last question and an answer in response to my Tweet.

forakin Akin Akintayo

How much did we pay for this Nigeria @ 50 website?http://is.gd/fyds1

From @fowora Too much.

At the same time, after seeing the first two errors I visited the “Contact Us” page and left a message which I published on Facebook.

As so after going through a few pages and I would the rest of the Nigeria @ 50 website I found the "Contact Us" page and decided I'll send a short message.

Hello,Whilst this website is good in general the attention to detail is wanting.
1. Emeka Ojokwu was a Colonel when Biafra seceded.
2. Each Tourism page has the title Toursim.
I believe you should take time to review and proofread the content - this is a showcase of Nigeria, for once let us show that we can be meticulous to a fault, if necessary.

I wonder if I am asking for too much, it would appear this website suddenly came alive just 3 days to the 50th Anniversary, I wonder what else is there to nit-pick at.

To crown it all, the Welcome to Nigeria page is Coming Soon, it is like being welcomed as a guest at the end of your stay, which is at variance to the supposed culture of Nigerians as the page states, “The most common greeting is a handshake with a warm, welcoming smile.” I suppose we have not found the website equivalent of Nigerian welcome yet.

‘Nuff said.