Point to Ponder: Some (Un)conventional Wisdom

Friends, something I come across my inbox a while back (yes - once in a while I do read those forwards emails, only that I never forward to 10 friends as demanded and yet I am still alive!) A jobless man applied for the position of "office boy" at Microsoft. The HR manager interviewed him then watched him cleaning the floor as a test."You are employed" he said. "Give me your e-mail address and I'll send you the application to fill in, as well as date when you may start".The man replied "But I don't have a computer, neither an email.""I'm sorry", said the HR manager, "If you don't have an email, that means you do not exist. And who doesn't exist, cannot have the job."

No email, no existence

The man left with no hope at all. He didn't know what to do, with only $10 in his pocket. He then decided to go to the supermarket and buy a10Kg tomato crate. He then sold the tomatoes in a door to door round. In less than two hours, he succeeded to double his capital. He repeated the operation three times, and returned home with $60. The man realised that he can survive by this way, and started to go everyday earlier, and return late. Thus,his money doubled or tripled every day. Shortly, he bought a cart, then a truck, then he had his own fleet of delivery vehicles. 5 years later, the man is one of the biggest food retailers in the US.

He started to plan his family's future, and decided to have a life insurance. He called an insurance broker, and chose a protection plan. When the conversation was concluded, the broker asked him his email. The man replied, "I don't have an email ". The broker answered curiously, "You don't have an email, and yet have succeeded to build an empire. Can you imagine what you could have been if you had an email?!! "The man thought for a while and replied,  "Yes, I'd be an office boy at Microsoft!

"Moral of the story:1. Internet /email is not the solution to your life.2. If you don't have internet / email , and work hard, you can be a millionaire.3. If you had received this message by email, you are probably already an office boy/girl, and not any close to being a Billionaire.

On The Live Band & The Winning Streak!

I know I must have quoted this passage sometimes back when I endeavoured to do 2 blog posts in a month, but I will not mind quoting it again:

“If you do something that turns out wrong, you can almost always put it right, get over it, learn from it or at least deny it. But once you have missed out something, it’s gone. There will be the girl you never got to say the right words to, the band you never got to see live, the winning streak you never got to cheer, the brilliant retiring professor whose class you never took, the relative you never got close to. It is a long list no matter what. Try to keep it as short as possible.” – Gordon Driszchilo


The reason I come back to this post is not because I managed to achieve some lofty feat that I have aspired to or because I got some deep philosophical insight into some thing, rather it is some mundane stuff that I have been upto to. The band I got to see live and the winning streak I got to cheer.


Last Saturday I went to listen to James Ingram. When I was young, sometime in the 80s when all we listened to was one radio station, I heard James Ingram’s “There’s No Easy Way” to break someone’s heart and got fascinated by the song and later his music in general. Those who know me know that I never get excitable by stuff like shows but when I heard James Ingram was coming to Kenya I decided that I must watch one of the musicians I grew up listening and loving. Most of them are now dead (Luther Vandross, Andy Gibb, Michael Jackson, two thirds of the Bee Gees, Whitney Houston et al) and one day I will be old and wondering that I never got to see any of my “idols” perform. I am past that age where one aspires to go to the US or Europe (yes, with old age indeed comes some wisdom), and so I might as well never get the opportunity to see these people who defined my childhood (and yes, teenage romance) live in action. I knew 5k was a bit on the high side but was not going to miss the performance and soon an old romantic and his money were soon parted.



I must say I actually enjoyed the performance and even murmured along in places where I could no longer remember the lyrics.


The other half of this quotation is about the winning streak. For local football lovers, there is only one team that has been putting on the winning streak in the local league. I have done my vocal cords an injustice with the amount of football songs I have been subjecting it to over the weekends (as they say, even old cats drink milk) but one thing is for sure, if we do win the league, I will say I was there. If we don’t do it, well we came close enough and I enjoyed the ride. I have heard the young ones say the slogan nowadays is YOLO (You Only Live Once) and I do like to think of myself as being young at heart. I might not be having the energy (or time) to appear more regularly on the blogs but that is not to say I am not enjoying myself. Go out there and enjoy yourself!!!

Of Coming Back (for lack of a better term)...

It has been a while since I was here, a combination of several factors. First, I have been on the move, it terms of jobs. I have said good bye to Media Focus on Africa and been welcomed at FilmAid, where I actually used to work before I moved to Media Focus. That of course meant being super busy as I wound up my work at Media Focus and therefore meant less time for blogging. But I must admit that I have also not really felt up to it. It has been one of those days (many days) when you promise yourself that you will drag yourself to the computer and jot down something, but then you dont. But hey, blogging is not a matter of life and death. Unless you are being paid to do it! Oh, and the Olympics of course! Why should I sit down jotting something for the blog when I could be watching the Olympics? And I think I could say that I am proud of having been converted to a new sport as well, whoever thought that one day I would be glued to my television set watching diving? The greatest moment for me was however on the track, especially the men's 100m! And of course to see David Rudisha break a world record on his way to winning the 800m. On another note, I also lost my phone and my valuable contacts to Nairobi's smart...thuggish ones. I feel victim to one of the oldest tricks in the book, a trick that I am very conversant with, but then instincts are instincts, not brains. I was in traffic, going through my twitter timeline (the traffic, as usual, was at a standstill) when someone banged the car from behind. I turned my head back, instinct, and before I knew it, another hand was inside the window making a grab for the phone. I did not have a chance. I don't care much about the phone, it was pretty old, but the contacts and data. Note to self: stop relying too much on technology and look up the word "back-up". I will not promise myself much for now, in terms of writing, but once I ease myself into my new work station and get my life back on a rhythm, I am sure I will be back.

Point to Ponder: Of Coca Cola, Juggling, Family and Work

Some of us who have been castigated for spending more time at work at the cost of being with family like using the argument that success at work will guarantee future benefits and time with the family. How does the family expect me to provide them the finer things in life, let alone the basic needs, if I am not able to advance myself at the work place? How will I afford the best colleges for the kids, one or two holidays outside the country if I am but an average worker? Those making the noise should therefore cool their heels and wait till that time when we will be able to afford the time with them as they want. But as I have since discovered, it is not all that simple, and recently I received a timely reminder when someone posted this image on my facebook wall.

For those with sight problems it reads: "Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. They are Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop any of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will bever be the same. You must understand that and strive for it. Work efficiently during office hours and leave on time. Give the required time to your family, friends and have proper rest." I might not necessarily be able to tell how genuine this speech is (with the internet you can never really tell what is fact and myth nowadays) but this speech certainly struck a chord for me. I hope it communicates something to all my fellow workaholics out there! In the meanwhile, I will leave this lying around the office where the bosses can "accidentally" discover it! In other news, it has been raining the proverbial cats and dogs in Nairobi. We generally don't trust the meteorological department here, that is why this picture brought a big smile on my face

Facebooking Till Death Do Us Asunder

A few weeks back I reflected on what kind of 'alone' life we live that someone can lie dead for 3 years undiscovered. As fate would have it, I then ran into a story of someone who commits suicide in front of friends. Well, maybe not real friends but rather facebook friends. Claire Lin was a Taiwan woman who committed suicide while chatting with friends on facebook. Lin's facebook entry shows her chatting to her friends and alerting them of her gradual asphyxiation. Her last words in Chinese, were: "Too late. My room is filled with fumes. I just posted another picture. Even while I'm dying, I still want FB (Facebook). Must be FB poison. Haha."

Read the full story here

What I found strange was that this was not a troubled teenager but rather a 31 year old woman. The article suggests that she had issues with her boyfriend who was the one that found her dead the next day. Also it was strange that none of her friends contacted the police though with the virtual nature of internet, one cannot probably be sure of someone's location or indeed if they are serious in their allegation.

For me the issue here is maybe that while social networking makes us feel connected, maybe we really are not. What's your take on this?