RSS Mischief IV - Post the pots

Double or starve

One morning, the vice principal came into the dining hall during breakfast when we had a bread bun and fish stew served in an aluminium dish. He asked one of the boys if the food was enough and the boy replied, “No sir.” That interaction led to the doubling of our bread rations, from then on we had two bread buns rather than one.

Our dinner ladies or cooks were of a different animal species, almost too well fed that they could have been a crossbreed of homo sapiens and hippopotamuses for the way the folds of skin at the elbows looked like armour cladding that you could not once suggest they were fat even as they were built like stout brick houses, their legs might have suggested elephantiasis, though none looked ill, and we were scrawny and skinny like Jack Sprat.

Weevils and vitamins

When we had beans that nearly passed for diarrheal effluent fully augmented with weevils, that became more of the protein content than the beans, you closed your eyes as you spooned in the sustenance, maybe mixed in with garri grains. That we never fell violently ill at what we were served was probably testament to a constitution borne of being shipped off to hostelry by our loving parents to toughen us up.

The dinner ladies had a side hustle of snacks and sweets that they sold to us, an escape from the witch’s gruel and puddings of three-square meals that would have made Oliver Twist think he was at the Ritz.

Gremlins of the dark

One night after everything had quietened down at the dining hall and the kitchen, I was invited by a classmate, and we found ourselves in the confines of the kitchen pilfering goods we should never have had access to. The doors and windows were bolted shut and yet we got in with ease.

The pots were placed over holes, there were heated from recesses for firewood on the outside and so whilst the food was cooked, the smoke was always outside. At the end of the day, the firewood was removed, and the recesses cleaned of ashes and soot for the next day.

Post the pots

We, the gremlins of the night could go into the recesses and lift the lighter pots and that was how we entered the kitchen, through the fireplace. How so criminal and soon the novelty of that enterprise wore out, for the pang of conscience and probably the realisation that too many gremlins were scavenging around the kitchen. Yet, I doubt Miss Marple would have determined how things were lost.

The thrill and the adrenalin rush of this naughtiness would have faded at the stroke of the first landing of the birch on one’s backside, you never wanted to suffer the humiliation of a morning assembly punishment and thankfully where one came a cropper, one was spared the lasting indignity of such.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Blog - RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Blog - RSS Mischief III - Swimming like crabs

Nigeria: Celebrating the Banditry of James Ibori at 54

A birthday celebration

I woke up this morning minded that I will escape the need to tweet anything crazily absurd about Nigeria and just have a swimmingly smooth day. No sooner than that thought had crossed my mind I clicked on a link that brought up a picture and that was the end of my wish.

The associates of Chief James Onanefe Ibori [1], the ex-governor of Delta State and current jailbird in Her Majesty’s Prison accommodation in the United Kingdom will be gathered [2] at his Oghara Country Home in Delta State to celebrate a “Birthday of Reconciliation” highlighting his 54^th birthday anniversary with a praise and worship service presided over by three “eminent” men of the cloth.

We need friends

Now, regardless of the tribulations by omission or commission a man faces in life, it is of the greatest hope that he is not deserted by friends and that might be the case with James Ibori, he still has friends and that is probably a good thing.

What is dangerous is having friends who are dishonest, disingenuous or who choose to remain obdurately oblivious of the truth about one’s character, behaviour and reprehensible acts.

Living legend?

In a full page advert taken out to announce this celebration which should have been private and completely out of earshot for its odium they have suggested James Ibori is “The Living Legend of Resource Control Struggle.”

These people must be having a big laugh at our expense because if this is to suggest James Ibori was at the forefront of the Niger Delta struggle, then I must have been living in a parallel universe not to have noticed it.

However, what we know by reason of the case of fraud and money laundering [3] brought against him in the UK is that a man on a £4,000 per annum confidently bought a house in the UK worth £2.2m.

Beyond that, the litany of looting is such that the judge in the case said it was impossible to ascertain how much James Ibori frittered away in avarice par excellence that makes the mind boggle.

Let it be known that James Ibori had acquired his riches "at the expense of the some of the poorest people in the world".

These people stink

In any case, disgraced, convicted and jailed in a foreign land along with his wife, his mistress and lawyer, there are people albeit of dubious respectability who are gathered to laud this man as some champion of a cause that seriously escapes me.

The associates [4] of this bounder, scoundrel, fraud and thief have successfully corralled into their disreputable assembly the South South Vice President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop God-Do-Well Avwomakpa, as guest preacher, while Rev. Gbejero and Rev. Oyibo would also minister.

It begs the question where the moral compass of Nigeria is if men of the cloth are cavorting with those who in other polite societies would be completely shunned until slowly rehabilitated when memory fails us, it is beyond shameful the hold that money and Mammon has over many church leaders that they will forget principle, character and tenet to sup with those without any virtue worthy of the barest emulation.

Where is our polite society?

The repugnant occasion will be chaired by an elder statesman and Professor Emeritus, B.I.C Ijeomah, a one-time eminent social science professor who by his involvement in this charade is neither distinguished nor reputable – but we probably have no discernment of character in Nigeria once the money is on the table to judge who we should associate with and who we should shun.

In another country, no one will publicly associate with James Ibori apart from his lawyers one of whom is serving time for serving him, he will be stripped of all honours and dignities and left so full of shame that he will seek a low profile exile in some faraway land.

Give no honour to them

Nigeria is not about to see that kind of society, though James Ibori will be kept at Her Majesty’s pleasure for 13 years or probably less than that, he will most definitely return to Nigeria triumphantly, celebrated to the rafters to find great honour amongst thieves like himself who have milked and bilked Nigeria dry with impunity and without consequence.

We can however avoid this shameful parade of the notoriously ignominious by excoriating in the sternest terms all who gather to celebrate corruption and worse as they continue to give our dear country a very bad name and image.

Stop this nonsense

Invite yourself to that rotten assembly at Oghara on the 4^th of August 2012 and make all the attendees as uncomfortable as you can get them, we need to repudiate these congregations of the reprehensible and give no place to the indefensible – we will do our bit on Social Media.

Nothing on God’s good earth should give licence to this decadent fanfare.

Sources

[1] James Ibori - Wikipedia

[2] James Ibori 54^th Birthday Advert

[3] Former Nigeria governor James Ibori jailed for 13 years | BBC News

[4] Associates to honour Ibori at 54 | Daily Independent

Other reference

Nigeria: Celebrating Honour Amongst Thieves

Incredible India: Usurping Sly Bastards (USB)

These are no deals

I remember writing years ago about deals that people get from hawkers of fake watches and gadgets that roam the social outlets around Gran Canaria commercial centres.

In my view, greed is almost always at play, the hawker looking almost too respectable to be true, sweet-talking patrons about an unmissable deal.

The patrons out for some fun are caught in the trap of viewing what they do not need and depending on how pliable they are will almost always acquire what they do not want.

Weeping in silence

If the deal is struck, the hawker makes away with the cash, a veritable confidence-trickster who has taken advantage of the gullible who have irresistibly allowed they vanity to get the better of them and in so doing acquired a dud with no guarantee but the word of a stranger with no address, shop or traceable from of contact.

When the dust settles, the patron realises they have been taken for fools, though they silently mourn their stupidity and in self-flagellation and self-pity swear to themselves never to be caught in such a scam again, but they do.

Usurping Sly Bastards

Now, in New Delhi, as I went for a walk, I was accosted by persons hawking off 64GB USB sticks for prices that made your eyes pop – surely, those goods must have fallen off a lorry.

I did not need a USB stick and there was no reason to add to my collection of sticks just because it looked like a deal. The best deal is one where you can return it if you are not satisfied.

A few days ago, I was told those USB sticks were duds, now, I did not know how dud they were until this afternoon after lunch, a trainee colleague showed off his bargain buy.

Another colleague took it off him and prised it open to show an empty cavity – that blew me away, I expected some circuitry, at least – nothing but a USB connector and a plastic case pretending to be a product of Kingston Technology, one of the market leaders in memory and storage products.

Bang them up

It is one thing to sell counterfeit products, maybe another to sell stolen goods but to be a purveyor of goods where the hawker deliberately sets out to cajole, deceive, extort and dishonestly con unsuspecting tourists on the streets of New Delhi, one is well advised of the need to walk with caution and offer no acknowledgement to persons unknown, no matter how attractive their wares.

One would hope these people are taken off the streets but it probably is part of the mystique of Incredible India to which some have unwittingly become the fool soon parted from their money and left holding a dud for a souvenir of their dumbness.

Travel waffle with sophisticated thievery

Got to get out of this place

Call it a restless spirit or some form of dementia. I cannot seem to spend more than four weekends in a stretch before I need to get out of the country.

Living in the Netherlands which by fortune of land recovery from the sea makes it 30% larger than it would have been means in 2 hours I could be in Antwerp (Belgium) or Düsseldorf (Germany), in 3 it is Brussels or Cologne and in 4 it is Hanover, Hamburg or Frankfurt in Germany or Paris in France and in 6 comfortable hours of travelling by train – I could be the Blue Angel in Berlin.

I would say, I love travelling by train and it is only comfortable if you are travelling in the right section of the train where the seats recline, you are served at your seat and a majority recognise the need for civility.

At least, if you were to complain about some attitude, you would not have the great unwashed screaming back at you for pointing out they are wrong.

Town confusion pay attention

One interesting thing about train travel in Europe is the announcements as you arrive at a station.

For example, once when we were approaching Antwerp (English), Anvers (French) or Antwerppen (Flemish/Dutch), the announcer indicated passengers to Ghent should change trains.

What I found striking about the announcement was the fact that if you missed your language and there are 4 languages for travellers through Belgium; you would be completely lost, because each language might just provide another name for the same place.

In the case of Ghent – which sounds like Gent in English with a G rather than a J sound; Gun with a silent N in French and Hent with a hard G sound like the CH from Loch in Dutch/Flemish – the foreigner has no chance of ending up at the proposed destination.

Also, you have Liege (French), Luik (Dutch/Flemish), Lüttich (German) and you begin to realise that place names are hard enough if you are not in England where Leicester Square is the Shibboleth – the Americans are always caught just as Greenwich (pronounced – Grennitch) or Southwark (Suddock) shows up the natives from the aliens.

Less perfume more culture

This time, it was Cologne (English), Köln (German) or Keulen (Dutch) and no, they do not sound the same either. Just as River Niger and the Republic of Niger do not sound the same as the first is English and the second is French.

So, I decided I would spend the weekend in Cologne and found that the joy of Internet bookings does not extend to train services in the Netherlands, Belgium or France if you are travelling within 5 days.

However, journeys over 101 kilometres within Germany offer the prospect of booking online and you get a PDF which you can print out as your tickets up to within 10 minutes of travel.

Makes you wonder why one cannot book within 5 days of travel and one can guess that the unions have thwarted that automation to keep postal workers occupied.

Internet booking should be a no-brainer; I have been booking trips in the Internet since 1995 when British Midland first started the service with http://www.IFlyBritishMidland.com.

The steal of the century

So, I got to the station and bought a ticket off the automatic ticket machines thinking I only had 20 minutes before the train. Alas, I was thinking 15:07 for the train which in fact ran at 14:07 and the next was at 17:07, so 2 hours or so to kill.

I make a beeline to the Left Luggage department which is a self-service facility of lockers which accept coins for activation.

Since many would not have the coinage to add to EUR 3.70 for the small lockers a note-to-coin exchanger does the job of converting 5, 10 and 20 Euro notes to just Euro or Eurocent coins which are 1 or 2 Euros and 50 Eurocents.

This is the steal of the century and it is so innocuous it is atrociously corrupt. You need at least a 2-Euro coin, a 1-Euro coin, a 50-Eurocent coin and then a 20-Eurocent coin to make up EUR 3.70 for the locker.

Utter, utter, thievery

The exchanger does not offer 20 Eurocents, the locker does not give change and the staff do not give change.

So, if you desperately need a locker and cannot get change for 50 Eurocents, you forfeit 30 Eurocents which goes to somebody’s pocket because the receipt you get says EUR 3.70 even though the system has swallowed 4 Euros.

If the collector counts the number of tickets issued and say up to 50% of locker users never get the exact change, it means 5% of the take from that day gets pocketed.

I would not be surprised with this scheme and scandalous abuse does not go high up in the service provider’s echelon.

It would have been easier to make it EUR 3.50 or EUR 4.00, but no free money would go to the station mafia.

I do remember complaining about this years ago when the locker price was in Guilders and the staff just shrugged – it is a nice little earner and the Dutch are good at making money. I just do not want to be fleeced in this way.