Long Week now Numb with Relief

Leo ni Friday lakini I am too numb to do the usual Friday Stuff.

It's been an unusually tough and bloody long week, swamped with jobo. Its a surprise that I was able to squeeze time to blog regardless, this was not helped by the fact peeps put up either very long deep posts, technical posts and crypic posts that require more mental capacity than I could spare plus the suspense. Lakini thank you all for helping me keep my sanity.

Fortunately it has all worked out and the company can keep its certification otherwise I wouldn't be able to face the boss on Monday since the project is my baby.

Leo nitarudi nyumbani mapema, take a shower and doze on the sofa, aki thats performing very poorly for a Furahiday.(yes! even here in Embu we get some action occassionally)

What I would do for a massage right now. Kesho nikiamka nikiwa freshi I'll be back at full mental.

Cheers!

A Comic Voyage

Inspired by Mwaris history of book reading it brought back my earliest memories of what introduced me to reading and got me hooked. From a very early age I remember getting attracted to comic books in those days I remember there was a small bookshop next to citymarket where an elderly Asian lady used to sell used books and any time I had the opportunity to go into town with my dad we used to make it a point to drop there. At one end there was a big pile of comic books and I ussually used to make a beeline for it straight away and plead with dad to buy as many as possible.

Some of the earliest comic books I fell in love with were the British children comic books of the day such as:

• Beano: Who can forget Dennis the Menace and his ally Gnasher, Minnie the Minx, Rodger the Dodger and the Bash Street Kids
• Dandy: Remember Desparate Dan and his apetite for Cowpies, Korky the cat, Desparate Dawg
• The Beezer & Topper: The Banana Bunch, Colonel Blink the Shortsighted Gink, Pop Dick and Harry, The Hillys and the Billys and my all time favorite - The Numskulls which I believe inspired a Sitcom

While I was enjoying these british comics I also started picking the Disney comics and quickly went through tens of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and Tweety and Sylvester.

Before long the superhero DC Comics came my way and I discovered Superman, Batman, Spiderman and the Fantastic Four. At this stage I was hooked and it helped that my mum was in UK for a while back then and when she came back she had a full trunk full of Superhero comics. I totally loved Superman and I believe he is the coolest of all superheros and I secretly fantasized that I had the supepowers of superman.

Further along on my voyage I started getting interested in the the Archie and Jughead comics it was at this time that Yaya centre was opening and there was a nice little bookshop called Bookstop where they also sold secondhand books and comics and using the pretext of going to buy comics for my small bro I used to make sure that I put in a number of Archie comics which of course were for me to read first. The Archie characters were priceless, I always enjoyed the tag of war between Veronica and Betty for Archies attention (I always rooted for Betty though), Jughead and his love of food laziness and hate of girls (Ethel was it?) and how was Big Moose despite being rather slow was able to bag such a lovely girl as Midge which caused Reggie alot of pain whenever he tried to slice in.Also not to be forgotten was the Adventures of Tintin many of the breaktimes in school were spent comparing notes on the number of Tintins we had read and by Std 6 I am pretty sure I had read them all, My first was Cigars of the Pharoahs and my favorite was Explorers on the Moon. Again the Characters were unforgetable, Captain Haddock, Bianca Castafiore, Proffesor Calculus, Tompson and Thompson and who could forget Snowy. My favorite character was of course the drunk always swearing Captain Haddock with his "Billions of billious blue blistering barnacles in ten thousand thundering typhoons"

Now the ultimate classic is Asterix and for your information I am not yet over this one and I am capable of snatching it from your baby bro so watch out :-). I find the Asterix strips so creative, humerous and entertaining I clearly remember my first one which is still my all time favorite - Asterix and Cleopatra "That nose!" The naming of the characters was hillarous, Unhygenix the fishmonger and his wife Bacteria, Fulliautomatix the blacksmith, Vitaltatistatistix the chief, A Roman centurion named Poisonus Fungus or Crismus Bonus the sterotypes and puns of the various European Tribes is quite uncanny. It always made me laugh out loud whenever Cacofonix the Bard was tied up during the banquent except in one adventure, The banquets which everyone had a whole wildboar to themselves. Obelix my favorite charactor was never allowed by Getafix the druid to have a sip of Magic potion cos he fell in a cauldron when he was a baby except in one instance in Asterix and Cleopatra.

This Frisky Gaul and his obese friend Obelix in their myriad adventures has kept me entertained for over 20 years and I am sure many more to come.

All pictures from Wikipedia.com

No News is Good News?

I think Not.
After todays morning explosion is took it think like an hour before scattered rumours started filtering into the office about a blast in Nairobi. Of course with the typical Kenyan rumour mill there were already around 101 different theories floating around and that was even before morning tea was served.
Being away from news sources in the office apart from the internet I wasn't able to get any verifiable facts until around lunch time when I checked the newsfeeds on my newsreader from CNN, BBC and Reuters they were still bila story from Nairobi. Of course Google news searches for Nairobi picked up the news feeds from around 10.00 am. I was late for lunch time news at 1.00PM and when I got to the house all the channels had live coverage of KANU's Special Delegates meeting so again no news updates for me. Speculation was rife as people rushed into all sorts of conclusions blaming this and that group or persons, blaming the government, blaming the opposition, blaming foreigners, looking for religious, political, social and economic angles.
As a typical news junkie you can imagine my frustration as I searched for information about the blast since all my folks and and alot of my friends are in Nairobi but from all those I have heard from I guess they should be all OK.
Perhaps the blast was too minimal or inconsequential to the world media to attract widespread and quick coverage but I still wonder how it would have been if it featured one American or if the hotel in question was the one associated with a certain pseudocelebrity who is currently languisihing in an American Jail the coverage would have been any different. As the country grapples with addressing the role of the media, the media bill and the information superhighway I hope we shall be able to find a solution to this information gap when it comes to breaking news.
As I struggle along trying to get more news I pray for anyone who might have been affected or hurt in todays events. Since I don't want to miss the 7.00PM news let me sign off now.

Facing My Ghosts

Ouch!!! Did I do that?

Today I am in a reflective mood, Its Labour day no work and it being a Tuesday makes it totally useless since I can't do much rather than lounge in the house and reflect on my experiences over the last year. One experience that has stood up in my recent past is when I was struck by the ghost of bad luck and ended up raming my precious auto on a stuborn tree.

The Red Circle indicates where my house is.

It happened on one of those long weekends when a public holiday falls on a Monday (now thats the connection with my current thoughts!) I was coming back to Embu after having a splendid time in Nairobi which involved a drive down to Olepolos to devour some prime goat ribs. Having set of pretty early I was in Embu by 4:00 PM and was looking forward to relaxing after the hectic weekend in my house.
Around 20 Metres from my driveway I veered slightly off the middle of the murram road leading to my house and suddenly I felt the tyres near the edge of the road begin to spin on the loose surface, because of the unequal traction on the left and right wheels the car started swinging uncontrollable as I tried to correct the direction with the steering wheel. I know from prior experience that applying emergency brakes on such a loose surface or when in a skid is a recipe for disaster so I had to try and regain control. Unfortunately on both sides of the road were closely spaced rows of trees and before I knew it I had collided head first with one of those trees. I think this all happened in all of 2 seconds. Fortunately I was moving at fairly slow speed not more than 20 KPH since I was already inside the company premises and I managed to escape unscathed just slighly shaken (Thank god for Airbags). The car on the other had ended up with a thoroughly disfigured front end which actually looked much worse than it actually was.

Front end in desparate need of a 'Nose job'

As I reflect on this mishap which is the closest I have ever come to meeting my maker I made a few observations.

• You don't have to be drunk to cause accidents; It annoys me to no end when people rush to assume that when you have an accident that you must have been drunk, In this instance I was as sober as judge which is what I ussually am whenever I drive long distances.
• You don't have to drive fast to have an accident; Another assumption people make is that you have to be speeding to loose control I will have you know that a half tone saloon moving at 20 KPH will do untold damage when in comes across an immovable object such as a tree or wall if it meets you head on at that speed trust me we shall be discussing you in past tense.
• Accidents don't always happen far away; I was only 20 metres from my house I find it amusing when people tell you that they only need to wear seat belts on long journeys, Kwani it's OK to die when you are near home? Nowadays even when going for a packet of milk at the duka I belt up.
• Insurance Pays; I was always skeptical about the need to pay insurance and agreed with those who said that 'Insurance is like an umbrella on a sunny day which is taken away when it's raing' well I was forced to eat my words since I had only just paid my first premium on that car and yet they were able to finance the total repair on the car and it actually looks better than new.
• Automatic transmission is crap on offroad; I was all praise for my automatic transmission until this mishap although I have no way of proving it I'm pretty sure that if I had my trusty stick shift I would have been able to bring the beast under control.
• Murram is a whole different ball game; when you driving surface resembles small ball bearings anything you try and do with your steering will be like running on an Ice rink with high heeled shoes.
• Nose Jobs don't only refer to plastic surgery; while consulting with my mechanics on the repairs I learnt new terminologies such as Nose-cuts, Half-cuts which are not the preserve of cosmetic surgeons but refer to the art of removing the entire front of the car and replacing it leaving your car looking like new. It will now take a very meticulous fella to detect that my car had such a disfiguring accident.

I hope now after this reflection I can now look back at this incident and be able to laugh.

Now on to more pressing matters. Man U tomorrow meet up with AC Milan for Semi of the Champions league. Now that we almost have the league sawn up I a have kazaad my butt for the game cos if we do it will probably set up the momentum for the treble I can hardly wait. Good luck to the Liverpool tonight and lots of Luck to Arsenal on Sunday as you can see I am in generous spirits even though there is a glimmer of selfishness inherent (Hehehe...)