I’ve been trying to get my hair coloured for a while, and I finally gave up  after four tries and three thousand shillings. I didn’t want to pour more money down the sink. Plus, I was afraid my hair would fall off. Hair colour can do that sometimes.

The saga began with a mix of two colours – ultraviolet black and aubergine. This was followed by some food colour, more aubergine, and some wailing with mirrors.

The first time I dyed it, the hairdresser said it was coloured, but my baby girl said otherwise. I couldn’t see purple either.

The second time, it started out purple, but darkened with the food colouring. And the third time, they let it stay on too long, so the effect was fade to black.

After each session, the hair-people swore that my hair had turned, but I was dissatisfied. They told me to be patient, and that the colour would ’shout’ after a few weeks.

Some days later, my baby finally admitted my hair was a little tinted. I didn’t believe her.

Even when some random dude using roller blades on the road to Kibera made a comment, I wasn’t having it. He said my hair was really pretty, and asked if I’d bathed it in Kiwi.

Well, not in those words exactly, but that was the idea. Read the rest of this entry →

Do you enjoy word games? There are many to pick from : crossword puzzles, letter jumbles, word searches, etc. Word games are a fun way to pass the time, and many of us play word games regularly as a way to keep the brain sharp.

Does doing the daily crossword puzzle really improve your memory? The answer is: not was much as you might think.

Word games tend to be stimulating for the brain when you first start doing them. Crossword puzzles, for example, help to improve your vocabulary and challenge your brain to think about language in terms of letter count, abstractions and comparisons.

The novelty you experience when first doing crossword puzzles is a good recipe for brain exercising. But something happens after doing crossword puzzles for a little while as you start to become good at them! You start remembering all of the three letter words; you develop strategies and recognize repeating patterns. Your brain naturally adapts to the task and because of this, the task becomes easier.

Unless you diligently challenge yourself with harder and harder crossword puzzles, you are unlikely to experience the same kind of vigorous brain work out you received when first starting.

Posit Science has created a free word game called Word Wanderer that is specifically designed to overcome this issue for brain fitness. Word Wanderer’s key difference versus other word games is that it uses intelligent adaptive measures to ensure that you train at your own personal threshold, the uppermost edge of your skill level.

Word Wanderer is designed to adapt quickly to your skill level, so that you do not waste too much time working at skills that are either impossibly challenging or trivially easy. The game increases the difficulty so that you are typically training at threshold which means that you are constantly working your brain. As soon as you master a task, the program makes the task more difficult to encourage your brain to build stronger and more refined neural pathways. [To play Word Wanderer, click here] Read the rest of this entry →

So … I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks. 

I have a  perfectly legitimate excuse. The first week, I had workshops, so I had to leave the house earlier. The second week, my cheques hadn’t cleared and the gym subscription had run out.

I bumped into the gym instructor three days into the ‘wallet-fast’ and he told me I could come in anyway. I didn’t take him up on it. It was partly guilty conscience, but mostly oversleeping.

Somewhere amid my hiatus, I had to go to a clinic for a routine tune-up. As usual, they checked my temperature and BP, then asked me to be weighed.

I’d gained 1.5 kilos!

Either those two weeks really did something bad, or the hospital scales were wrong. Because on my home scale, I still weigh exactly the same as I did six months ago. Weird.

Maybe it’s my home scales that are broken. Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve always had weight issues. In high school, I went as high as 80 kg … and yes … I have heavy bones. But my optimum weight is 60. It looks good, it feels great, and at 5 foot almost-six-inches, its BMI is 22. I think.

Right now, I weigh 70. It’s very distressing, since even while pregnant, I didn’t go over 65. Somewhere between sun, sand, and Morocco burgers, I gained ten kilos. Luckily, the excess weight doesn’t show unless you look very closely. It’s mostly centred around the middle, and corsets do wonders to hide that. But corsets can’t stop heart disease, fit under bathing suits, or solve bedroom shyness. So now, my target is to lose 10 kg.

I’ve been hoping to do it through sheer will-power like The Secret says. After all, wisdom claims that all weight is gained by thinking fat thoughts. I don’t know about that, but considering I’ve had four years of coastal cuisine and no exercise [I lived five minutes from my office], I should be a lot heavier than I am.

Despite thinking thin thoughts, gorging on chocolate, and watching UK’s Biggest Loser for three months, I haven’t lost [or gained] an inch.

Enter my good pal, who talked me into joining the neighbourhood gym. It’s right next door to my flat, they open at 5.30 a.m., and they throw in free stretches after each workout. I’m not talking hands-in-the-air-and-reach-for-the-sky here. I’m talking actual stretches. They grab your limbs and yank them till you squeal. Then they pound on your back and massage it. It’s heavenly! When they’re done, your skin feels like jelly. I work out from 6.00 to 7.00 each morning, sometimes 7.30. Then I get stretched and rubbed, no gutter intended. After that, a protein drink, a nice hot shower, and off to work. Read the rest of this entry →

There are now 9 confirmed cases of the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) in Kenya according to this Standard newspaper story. Uganda has also confirmed a case. Here is a basic run down of this disease.

What Is The H1N1 Virus?
Novel influenza A (H1N1) is a new flu virus of swine origin that first caused illness in Mexico and the United States in March and April, 2009. It spreads mainly through the coughs and sneezes of people who are sick with the virus, but it may also be spread by touching infected objects and then touching your nose or mouth. It causes a wide range of flu-like symptoms, including fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. In addition, many people also have reported nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea.

Why Was A Pandemic Declared?
The World Health Organization (WHO) raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 6 in response to the ongoing global spread of the H1N1 virus. WHO’s decision to raise the pandemic alert level to Phase 6 is a reflection of the spread of the virus, not the severity of illness caused by the virus. Read the rest of this entry →

The Exercise Habit is not the easiest habit for most people, and most people’s experiences (me included) consist of starting and stopping and starting again. Which is fine — don’t beat yourself up about it. The important thing is starting again.

The Main Problems
So why do most people have trouble making exercise a regular habit? Well, there are probably a number of factors, but here are the main ones:

Too difficult. People set out with a lot of ambition and enthusiasm, and start out with a big goal. “I’m going to go to the gym for an hour a day!” or “I’m going to hit the tread mill for 30 minutes every day!” The problem is that the goal is too difficult to sustain for very long. You can do it for a few days, but you soon run out of energy, and it becomes a drag to do it. Read the rest of this entry →