A Parship looking like a parsnip

Feelings can become I

Clinical as some of my analysis of some issues can be, I am in fact an emotional person, if not a romantic.

At least, I believe myself to be one, I have had romance before and maybe sometime ago, I have been besotted, sometimes taken in infatuation, probably lovesick and needing.

In short, I am a social being, I love my own company and I love companionship, somehow, I am not completely fulfilled if I am not sharing my time or my interests, I am not sure about sharing my life – I have too many scars.

Compatibility or none

Maybe the reason why I have not had a long standing relationship for a long time is the question of compatibility. This is one of the collateral issues with breaking up – you learn without ambiguity what you do not want if another relationship comes up, you never really know what you want in the next one.

The bar is higher, the hurdles are tougher and being single becomes even more reinforced as a state of being and a state of mind.

In fact, I have already taken consolation in being an observer of people, relationships and sometimes offering advice to many that if you cannot be with the one you love, you should love the one you are with.

Maybe you realise how important relationships are when you have had a few, lost many and wonder where it has all been going wrong.

A snip or a ship

As I went to dinner with my neighbours on Sunday evening, the matter of meeting people came up and they had this information about joining a dating agency of sorts, they called it Parship [1]. Apparently, a couple of their friends had found lurve, both heterosexual and homosexual on this site.

Somehow, they profile you by being triaged through a multitude of personality analysis questions and then they form a profile about you that is then matched to prospective partners in some compatibility framework.

Dutch, hot Dutch and double Dutch

So, I gave it whirl and immediately found out that it was not as international as I would have liked – there is always this impression that people living in a country would all be speaking the same language such that living in the Netherlands means you should be a Dutch speaker.

There is some truth to that, but is it not the whole truth because I might well be in the Netherlands but that does not mean I want to meet a Dutch partner even though I want my partner to also live in the Netherlands.

Even if I were to be a fluent Dutch speaker, I dread the idea of doing pillow talk in double Dutch, maybe I am being unnecessarily pedantic.

Profile and test

Halfway through the profile builder as I struggled with my Dutch and Yahoo’s Babelfish [2] translator, I logged out and logged in on the UK site – I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was allowed to continue in English.

When I finished, I ended up in bilingual interaction screens which sometimes had Dutch questions for more intimate stuff and English for the general stuff so I fired off a support call to customer support on Sunday, I got an acknowledgement but 96 hours on, “as soon as possible” is beginning to feel like waiting for eternity.

Anyway, my profile suggests I am as assertive as I am generous, I am not given to self-gratification and exercise almost excessive self-control, my need for relational intimacy is just about average, I like a regulated pattern of life and I am generally unconventional.

This is love for sale laid out as an old-fashioned telephone exchange, push the right buttons and you have a connection, but going through other profiles, I might well be too boring to interest anyone.

Polish up the parsnip

Meanwhile, I am getting all sorts of tips about meeting others in Dutch and being encouraged to take on a Premium subscription when some important communication comes through.

Well, not on your life, if customer support is that useless, there is no way my money is going into that fantasy scheme, I would like to have a relationship but I am not desperate for one, it would happen and if it does not happen, well, I still have my consolation.

I just wonder if I am being sold a romantic partnership through Parship or it is a rotten parsnip.

Sources

[1] PARSHIP: Find someone really right for you

[2] Yahoo! Babel Fish - Text Translation and Web Page Translation

Five years of blogging - Remember the children

Another year of blogging

Today marks the fifth year since I started blogging, in fact, I had already written a commemorative blog that dealt with blogs, blogging, the way people blog and what makes blogging interesting but I was persuaded of something else.

After over a thousand blog and about 250 blogs this year, I found that I was quite activist on Nigerian issues, political on global changes in government and controversial in historical perspectives.

Nigerian politics

Politics in Nigeria hit a new low as politicians charged with corruption never seemed to lose their allure and the anti-graft agencies were stifled, emasculated and almost made irrelevant. In fact, they who seem to be able to quote the constitution are the ones who could pay lawyers enough to filibuster the judicial system.

Kenya held rotten elections, Zimbabwe held murderous elections, Canada held inconclusive elections, South Africa held no elections but changed leaders, America held change elections, Thailand allowed the mob to discard elections and it is now up to Ghana to prove that Africans can hold free and fair elections.

Apes Obey

Two paragraphs of an analysis given by Lord Lugard in 1922 formed the basis of my Apes Obey! Series – 17^th July 2008; which highlighted a contemporary Nigeria that is in need of radical and transformational change – one is hopeful but not yet confident.

However, I dedicate my 5 years of blogging to childhood – the memories I write about that talk of a paradise of childhood never to be relived again, the children who today live in the most harrowing circumstances allowed by their parents, by society and by reprehensible sections of vilest expressions humanity of our humanity.

The throes of childhood

Madeleine McCann remains missing 19 months after she was abducted in Portugal.

Fathers have been implicated in the sexual abuse of their children –The allegations regarding Moji Obasanjo; Nigeria: Divorce mentions adulterous incest – 15^th January 2008, the harrowing story of Elisabeth Fritzl; Josef Fritzl: A man apart, an arch-demon indeed – 29^th January 2008.

Women who made broods of what should be a loving caring family units; The moral dilemma of mother rabbits – 15^th March 2008, the victims being Scarlett Keeling who was sexually assaulted at 15 and murder on a beach in Goa and Shannon Matthews, 9, whose mother was so vile and evil that she schemed the abduction of her daughter for reward. Save the children - From their parents? – 6^th May 2008.

Or parents who really thought they were doing right all the time - Mother's love or daughter's hate – 18^th November 2008.

Baby P

But the most difficult story must be the one of Baby P [1] whose 17 months on earth must have been a living hell of suffering no one can begin to imagine – whose angel seemed to caught in an interminable slumber as the people with the authority to ensure his safety fought to save their skins rather than the life of the child; Save the children - II.

He no doubt died of a broken heart but the broken bones and fractured spine took this to a limit of cruelty that would make the torture chambers of the Middle Ages look tame – for all who grieve about this matter, we only hope he is in a better place – Oh God! That he really be in a better place.

For all the children who I wish might have even just one day of the joy, the pleasure, the fun I had in my childhood [Many blogs of memories] that sometimes reads so idyllic but was real to m, and that is not enough – the ones who suffer at the hands of their supposed loved ones and adults who should know better – I do hope that when I next write a blog anniversary your stories might become more like mine and the memories I have.

Finally, I thank all my readers and all those who have left comments, you are appreciated and recognised – Thank you.

To Baby P and all the children – My five years of blogging

Source

[1] Death of Baby P - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nigeria: Eyesight linked to fraud and corruption

Excuses for answers

The fundamental principles of science, logic and objective analysis would have trouble coming through unscathed in Nigeria.

Having had an engineering education I fear for how we find excuses instead of answers to problems within the country, the publication of those excuses does leave much to be desired but the people in charge really do seem convinced of the method to their madness.

The Sunday Tribune in Nigeria obtained information that staff of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has been directed to undergo compulsory eye screening [1] with immediate effect.

Fraudulent eye tests

In fact, in is necessary to pay good attention to the health of the eyes and arrest impending eye problems or diseases, it is also known that poor eyesight might impact on performance, concentration and other aspects of well-being.

What I would not buy is the idea that poor eyesight is related to fraudulent and corrupt activity. This takes us into a realm of speculative suggestion without attempting to address the underlying issues of possible incompetence, deliberate and intentional corruption borne from the lack of principles, poor character development or just the lack of good virtue.

Now, where over-invoicing or under-valuation is concerned, it would suggest there are poor checks and balances, and the lack of procedures to arrest anomalies is a management and organisational issue – to have discovered the problems so far down the line that it has resulted to a systemic matter of fraud and outright corruption means that authority is in need of some radical review.

Results and evaluations

The results of the eye-tests should be interesting and hopefully lead to people taking corrective action that ensures their eyesight is not detrimental to their required productivity.

However, to automatically penalise those with poor eyesight as the main perpetrators of fraudulent activity such that they bare 85% of the cost of treatment is worrisome on the one hand, it also makes one wonder about those whose good eyesight absolves them of activities they might have knowingly schemed and perpetrated.

This is no fight against corruption

If indeed corruption and fraudulent activity has been ascertained, I wonder why the people are not put through an investigatory procedure leading to possible prosecution and then handed over to the anti-graft agencies equipped to root out corruption in public service.

This is where the eyesight link to corruption loses all credibility and has become a charade against the disabled rather than a determined and objective approach to dealing with corruption.

Should we then have people in call centres sent for aural testing without linking what they hear to proper comprehension?

It furthers the question of hand-eye coordination eliminating what the brain should be doing in literacy, numeracy and intelligent application of knowledge in the office the person occupies.

A lack of honest resolve

We should be honest with ourselves and go after the real issue; eyesight tests are good in any organisation, it might be used as part of a productivity enhancement methodology but in the fight against fraud and corruption, correcting the eyesight does not begin to address why people are incompetent, irresponsible, corrupt, dishonest and given to malpractice. It is insincere if not in itself fraudulent to advocate this kind of position.

This kind of action must not enter the body of knowledge as to how to tackle corruption, if ever; it should land in the laughable appendix.

Thankfully, when I read the story the chair was sturdy enough to prevent my falling over and laughing out loud with a cracked skull to boot.

Sources

[1] Fraud in FCTA: Authority orders compulsory eye test for staff: Sunday Tribune

Shinseki: Embracing change to remain relevant

I heard it hit me

Rarely do I have a situation where I hear something on television and I feel like I have been hit by the volume behind the light in a tunnel long before I knew what was coming.

The more I warm up to the idea of a President Obama the more I find an element of almost unhealthy scepticism asking me to re-evaluate my reluctant fascination.

What threw me was the statement he made on Wednesday the 26^th of November 2008 as everyone with a comment to make was going on about his cabinet being made up of Clintonian old-hands rather than new faces representing the mantra of change [1] that exemplified his campaign.

Change comes from me

He said, “Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost, it comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure then that my team is implementing.” [2], [3]

This man exudes confidence; that is an understatement, he exudes supreme confidence – even if his tenure ends up a nominal failure, I would suggest it would still be considerably better the tenures of many presidents before him.

In fact, for the times and situation in which the world finds itself, I suppose we can only agree that this is a man who has arrived at the right time to lead the world in a direction that might well fulfil some unravelling destiny.

The best brain before Iraq

If any of the appointments are causing concern including that of Hillary Clinton, I think that one that should make everyone think again is the pending appointment of General Eric Ken Shinseki [4] as the Secretary-designate for Veteran Affairs [5].

He clashed with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld [6] over the necessary troop levels of the war in Iraq and was pensioned off almost into ignominy as the “neocons” pursued their debacle in Iraq to a point of embarrassing disgrace that things had to change.

Between change and irrelevance

What makes General Eric Shinseki more significant to me is buried within a statement that has defined a number of career development and life changing goals that I have embarked upon.

I came across this in Tom Peter’s Re-Imagine [7], “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” [8] This statement was made by General Eric Shinseki when he was the Chief of Staff of the United States Army.

This statement has been highly paraphrased and sometimes plagiarised by many; in fact, I just noted that I had used it in at least 6 of my blogs.

I have learnt that if I am to remain relevant in a changing world I have to find ways of adapting to change and even embracing the change such that I am not swept away into irrelevance and oblivion but engaged in remaining significant, relevant, understanding and effecting even better change.

Represents relevance

The kind of thinking that General Shinseki had then was later on considered to be right all along, if there is a regime that embodies the concept of change in order to remain relevant and instrumental to even greater change for good things in the future, there could have been no better choice than to have General Eric Shinseki in President Obama’s cabinet.

The fact that he is a homeboy from Hawaii is completely beside the point, I have been inspired by his thinking and bringing him back into the mainstream can only be additional proof of the kind of visionary President Obama intends to be.

I have embraced change in order not be irrelevant, I wonder if you have thought of what you need to do to remain relevant at home, at work, in your community and in the world at large.

Sources

[1] Barack Obama Quotes - Barack Obama.net!

[2] Obama Defends Cabinet: The Change Will Come From Me

[3] Obama says change is in his vision _ if not appointments - Yahoo! News

[4] Eric Shinseki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Obama to nominate ex-general Shinseki to head Veterans Affairs - Yahoo! News

[6] Donald Rumsfeld - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] tompeters! management consulting leadership training development project management

[8] Tom Peters’ Excellence: The Relentless Pursuit of Dramatic Difference! [Powerpoint – PPT, slide 3]