Now That You Have a Car

You have crossed that awkward, deeply uncomfortable, sometimes shameful social state of being without a car. I mean in some countries where the public transport system works, not having a car is no big deal. But you are in Nigeria, where public transport is living hell, and owning a car can be the difference between life and social death.

You had suffered the humiliation and attendant frustrations. You swore to yourself, after the girl you came to a party with left in an air conditioned car, that things must change. The Nigerian god felt your pain, heard your cries of affliction and consequently, after much tithing and prayers, blessed your hustle. Enough to buy your own car. I rejoice with you.

You have taken the car to the man of God and they have spent over an hour with the bonnet open, anointing your car and protecting it against the spirit of accidents that those jealous neighbours and village enemies are sure to send your way. That is fine. But you also need my advice.

Your car is not beautiful unless you have covered it in stickers. Get one from your church or fellowship that declares this year to be your “year of anointing”, or your “year of unsurpassed success”. If your wife or husband goes to a different church, get one from hers too. You can never get too many. Get one sticker that declares your child to be a Star Student. Let those with dull children see it and regret that their wives didn’t take enough vitamins during pregnancy. Because of Police on the road, get either an NBA sticker or an ARMY sticker. You don’t have to be a lawyer or soldier to get them. Especially the NBA one – you can find that one in any court premises for one or two hundred naira.

Depending on how much God has blessed your hustle, get a customised plate number with your name or nickname, such as TONY01; DE DON 01; DADDY K. The ‘01’ is useful even if you have only one car. It just shows how much you have faith that more will come. Otherwise, depending on your level of gratitude to God, you can use a nice Bible verse, like ISAIAH43:4 or something like that.

Now that you are a car owner, you need to realise that your status has changed. You need to treat pedestrians with the disdain they deserve. It doesn’t matter that you were once a pedestrian crossing these same streets. You must never think like a pedestrian and do silly things like observing Zebra crossings. Those white lines are there to beautify the road. Speed across them and curse anyone who tries to get in your way.

Your neighbours need to feel your presence. They need to see just how your hustle has been blessed. Every morning, remind them by ‘warming’ your car. This process involves waking up at 6 a.m. and revving your car engine loudly until the neighbours wake up to the evidence of your blessed hustle.

You bought the car with your hard-earned cash. And that includes the car horns. Those who call your right to honk noise pollution, God will judge them appropriately and truncate their hustle. In fact, if you ask me, because of how important it is, your right to use your horn indiscriminately should be a constitutionally guaranteed right. Honk in the morning when your wife is wasting your time inside and you need her to hurry up. Honk when you see your neighbours. Honk in a traffic jam even though you are sure this will not make the cars miraculously move. Honk instead of slowing down when you are approaching a junction or intersection. Honk when you are angry. And when you are happy. There are few things as useful in a car as the horn.

At night, it is important that you see the road clearly. Nigerian roads are dark and dangerous, so you must use your full lights at all times. It doesn’t matter if you are blinding oncoming vehicles. Is it your fault that the government is not doing their job?

Other things you will learn on the job as a car owner include how to double park, how to drive against traffic on the highway, how to create multiple lanes in a traffic jam, how to beat traffic lights, how to stop in the middle of the road to say hello to a long lost friend, how to litter the street with wrappers of plantain chips bought in a hold-up, all of which every true and experienced Nigerian driver is adept at doing. I trust you will catch up quickly.

Once again I rejoice with you and may God keep blessing your hustle.

The Blackberry Smartphone and "Others"

Someone on nairaland recently posted something that made my eyebrows climb as far as my annoyingly receding hairline. Ok the hairline isn’t that bad and – hey!! Stop staring!! Anyway, this interesting post was titled: Weak Points Of Blackberry Phones. Here is the link just in case you want to check it out: http://www.nairaland.com/998154/weak-points-blackberry-phones

The whole idea behind this post was an-allow me to call it sad-attempt to once again ignorantly bad-mouth the blackberry smartphone. Niiggas (people) fear what they don’t understand-Nas (rapper).

One glaringly appalling statement he made was and I quote: “THERE IS NO OTHER THING THAT BLACKBERRY IS PARTICULARLY GOOD FOR, APART FROM BLACKBERRY MESSENGER.”

I cannot begin to emphasize how WRONG this statement is and for the simple fact that it was made leaves me wondering about every degree of knowledge this person holds.

First of all let me just say that I’m not picking sides but let me also say if I did have to choose, I would go for….amebo!!

Now the blackberry smartphone is JUST like every other smartphone. What makes a phone smart? Apart from the fact that it’s more interesting than a lot of people I know ba? Well a smartphone is a device that lets you make telephone calls, but also adds in features that, in the past, you would have found only on a personal digital assistant or a computer--such as the ability to send and receive e-mail and edit Office documents, for example. Did you notice I said nothing about PINGING?

So let’s see…can the blackberry do these? HYFR!! (If you don’t know what this means then you probably shouldn’t ask). So the question arises: apart from PINGING (yep, I’ll keep typing in uppercase…na my keypad), is there really any advantage to having a BB? (Apart from the obvious effisi points it gives ba?). Well the answer is simply YES….and no. confused? (untohhhh *sticks tongue out*)

Ok ok, I’m being serious here (which, for those who know me, is the only way I am) the advantage of the blackberry-and believe me, in Nigeria its only one-is…..wait for it……….UNLIMITED DATA!!!

Think about it, if we put a data cap on BB plans what do we get? In other news, I’ll leave you to answer that. Now that advantage aside, why a BB?

In that post I mentioned above, one of the poster’s argument (there is a strong urge to write poser instead) was the fact that you couldn’t do anything without an active BIS subscription. As we say on twitter, #FAIL!!! Mobipocket is an application that allows you view portable documents on your BB and it doesn’t need BIS. Documents to Go is another. I don’t remember needing to have an active subscription to play media files or even games. When you think about it, what is it you can do with an android that doesn’t have an internet plan that you can’t do with a BISless BB?

Next argument is the battery life. One question: have you used either an iPhone or an android or even a symbian for a whole day with it constantly connected to the internet running more than three applications simultaneously? Remember all liars shall repent and go to heaven. The battery life of a BB is GREAT(unless na UK used). Power consumption is a very relative benchmark especially when you want to measure cross-platform so we won’t go there. Let me however mention that if your android or iPhone was doing the same work under the hood with an uninterrupted data connection, your battery life would last as long as a kardashian marriage. I won’t even talk about the boot time…if you have to ask, then you don’t need to know.

However, BB isn’t all glitz and glamour. It has its perks. Frankly, there are a lot of them. The first being the fact that compared to other smartphones, it is over-priced. The LG Optimus-One goes for about 30k(in naira) and has almost the same hardware specs as the BB Curve 5 (9380) which goes for double the amount.

The second perk is flexibility. The blackberry platform doesn’t have as many applications as its counterparts. In fact, compared to the likes of androids and iPhones, the BB doesn’t even bring a challenge. You stand to have more options in terms of applications if you’re on any band wagon save #teamBB.

The third perk is a bit technical. Most BB’s (not all) don’t have built in flash support. Flash is basically a feature that makes browsing the web a lot easier. Why it isn’t there? Me ma I no know.

Let me just slide this in: am I the only person that is wondering when they'll make a camera better than 5MP? even the Porsche na 5MP...haba!!

And finally, and I bite my tongue saying this, the most irritating perk is the BIS subscription. While you can do some stuff without it, every application that requires data from the internet is pretty much useless without it. That is a serious deal breaker as I would love to be able to use my last N17 to post on facebook that my BIS has expired.

The point I’m trying to make is this: I STILL HAVEN’T SAID ANYTHING ABOUT PINGING!!!

There is a whole lot more to BB than its messenger (wey I no fit even send go market)

Thank you for your time. Now lemme PING small

PING!!


P.S please encourage a broda na...leave the comments so i'd know what you think. thanks.

A List of Things I Hate

I hate generators. They want fuel, we give them fuel. Then they say they want oil so we give them oil. Next thing you know, they break down after an hour and refuse to start up again. What is it this time, they say the don't know. So we call Dr. Mechanic and he comes and says we have to take generator to his hospital at workshop avenue. Hmmm...so generator comes back and everything is good for about two days. Today we put on generator and it comes on at one pull(not the usual till thy arms are about to fall off) and we are smiling. Alas when we change over all we can hear is the sound of all the bulbs in the house exploding. Damn!! Foolishly we run into the house to save broken bulbs instead of switching the damn thing off. Boom goes the TV. Bammm goes the fridge. Blaoowww goes the air condition and downnnnnn goes the fan and while i am writing this, ping goes my phone battery.... 
What was i saying? Oh, yes, I really hate generators. But i hate nepa even more. 


I hate nepa but they don't know it so i thought i should tell them. You are probably wondering why i am writing instead of marching into thier office and just saying whats on my mind. The thing is i am a little held back right now...in prison. What did i do? Well i tried to tell nepa how i felt about them is what. You see i picked up my phone and tried to call but i couldn't get a good connection and so my dislike for MTN grew. I went to a mast near my house and climbed it so as to get a good connection. At this point let me just mention that i think all masts are the same so dont blame me if i didnt know it belonged to visafone. Anyway some policeman shouts at me to get down and i try to explain but he cant hear me. I wave my hands to try to get my point across but lose my balance in the process. Isnt it just my luck that my phone slips and luckily falls on his head instead of the ground? Well he didnt seem to see it that way. I need the phone ofcourse so i climb back down to retrieve it and he promptly places me in cuffs. Now i'm pretty sure i could have wriggled my way out of that but the visafone technicians chose to show up just then. Turns out they had an interferance and needed to check it out. Would you belive that dumb policeman looked at me with a raised eyebrow? Did i mention i hate the police and its not because i am black? Anyway so i tried to explain how i hate nepa but they got angry when i mentioned the mast. Fine, i suggested...smart me...that they should call MTN. I am thier customer afterall, they should look after me. So we dialed 180 and waited for over 30mins. Naturally we got bored so we called ETISALAT. Would you belive those arabs actually picked? And i cant get a good connection with MTN? Anyway all of a sudden climbing masts became an offence somewhere in the constitution and an etibaba lawyer confirmed it. 
So please don't climb masts and please help me give nepa this message: I HATE YOU....Please bring the light. 
And i am begining to Hate MTN too. 
But right now, I REALLY HATE THE POLICE!!