Author Archives: bailey
It seems everyone these days is trying to get out of the rat race. I keep seeing all these articles shared on Facebook and Twitter about the “golden handcuffs” and the endless fruitless rat race. I guess they are supposed to open our eyes; make us stop being fooled by the flashy cars and surface lifestyles that hide the quiet desperation of employees worldwide. It’s a trap, they claim. Do I agree? Can I plead the fifth? I’ll be Switzerland on this one. Picture a lab rat running around in circles in a maze or… Continue reading →
Christmas for me was always the best time of the year: the long holiday, people carefree and chatty, new Christmas clothes and singing carols with my family around the stone fireplace. Also, this was the only time my mother baked cakes and cooked home-made French fries, with home-made tomato sauce!!! It was epic. On Christmas Day, we would dutifully wear our new (by “new” I mean not the usual hand-me-downs) Christmas clothes and go to church for the Christmas service, where the pastor would talk about the birth of Jesus Christ and the three wise… Continue reading →
On a day when I wake up, listless and unwilling, to face the day ahead, it takes all I have to just go to work and get through the day. I’ve had weeks like those, months like those, and they seem to be an endless cycle of the same old, same old. Most recently, after a particularly listless week, I thought “I need to change something, why not go somewhere different?” My mother’s house is in what you call a peri-urban area, but what I call a green leafy suburb. It’s what I hope my… Continue reading →
Today I met a cute stranger, well, maybe met is not the right word, but we shared breathing space and a bus ride for about ten minutes. He went ahead of me and got into the bus and I noticed his hands, nice hands, and the back of his head was pretty attractive too. He turned, and he was cuter than I thought he’d be. He was carrying a denim guitar bag, I noticed this because I am learning to play the guitar and also, I have a custom-made denim bag myself. On the bag… Continue reading →
I have observed with interest and bemusement (is that a word?) the fanaticism that exists whenever the English Premier League, Champions League or whichever other league from the numerous number of soccer leagues that exist is on. The men we thought were hard core and unfeeling become mushy, passionate and expressive creatures. “Love”, an alien word in their vocabulary before, becomes an everyday utterance whenever they talk about their beloved “Arsenal” or “Man-U”. That man who couldn’t be bothered when your friend got a baby and you “oooh-ed” and “aaah-ed” at the baby photos she… Continue reading →
Racism is real. Ask me, I saw it in action yesterday. I was in a matatu, heading somewhere, and I was seated next to the driver with a friend. As the driver was driving, he encountered two middle-aged Indian men, kalasingas, as we call them, riding on motorbikes at the speed of like 5 kilometres per hour, chatting, and hence, blocking the road on that lane that we were on. The driver went ballistic. It was ugly. He started insulting the men, the men insulted him back. It was some seriously foul insults that I… Continue reading →
I’m sure you’ve all seen them, the dreadlocked, curly-haired, braided, kinky-tressed (or Afro-kinky-tressed) ladies all over town. These days when I walk around the city centre, or go to any event that has several ladies in attendance, I notice it. More than half of the ladies have some form of natural hair style. Is it a trend? Yes. Is it more than a trend? I think so. I think the natural hair phenomenon is more than a sensation and it is here to stay. I am one of the natural-hair sporting ladies I’m talking about. After several… Continue reading →
After going through a harrowing quarter-life crisis and FINALLY finding my purpose, what I can say is that this has been such an eye-opening experience for me in so many ways. People, embrace your quarter-life and mid-life and three-quarter life crises! They open your eyes to new dimensions! At that point in my life (and even now), I wondered how or why someone would go to school, study, go to university and specialize in a certain course, say, business, do well in it, get a job related to the profession, then a year later, hate… Continue reading →
Happy New Year 2011! It’s great that we all get to see a new year even as we cringe as the years add on to our ages, but oh well…such is life. It strikes me as no coincidence that during the festive season, there are so many competitions, raffles, pick-and-win’s, shop-and-grab’s, etc. Why is it that there is an influx of these competitions when the holiday season rolls around? At every supermarket there is a raffle of some sort. Shop for goods worth 1,000 and get a raffle ticket to win a Vitz or whatever… Continue reading →
I was watching TV on Saturday morning, hoping to catch some funny cartoons to remind me of my not-so-distant childhood (cough cough, but do I say :)) but what I came across was disturbing, to say the least. When did cartoons become so…how shall I put it (at the risk of sounding redundant)…disturbing? There was a cartoon programme which showed an old lady speaking to a monstrous creature whose dialect I could hardly make out. Is this what kids are watching nowadays? Monsters, dragons, morphing humans turning into anything from a Transformers-like gadget to a… Continue reading →