TalkingB

Author: Talking-B

  • The what’s next moment…

    The what’s next moment…

    What do you do when you don’t know the next step to take, have you come to an end of a crossroad and you are like ‘oops’ what next awaits me?

    For students, they generally suffer from what I refer to as Post Graduate Stress disorder (I don’t know if that exists) especially when you are the go-getter, excellent grade, hardworking type of student.

    It is a time when one’s identity shifts into something bigger. In fact, it is the point of switching from the regular student life to the work environment and stepping more fully into the adult world. As I mused about this, I realized it also affected so many young people. Through my search, I bumped into the perfect story in Dale Carnegie, How to stop worrying and Start living and it goes as follow: 

    “In the spring of 1871, a young man picked a book and read twenty-one words that had a profound effect on his future. A medical student at the Montreal General Hospital, he was worried about passing the final examination, worried about what to do, where to gon how to build up a practice, how to make a living.

    The twenty-one words helped him to become the most famous physician of his generation. He organized the world famous John Hopkins School of Medicine, he became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford- the highest honor that can be bestowed upon any medical man in the British Empire. He was knighted by the King Of England. When he died, two huge volumes containing 1446 pages were required to tell the story of his life.

    His name was Sir William Osler. Here are the twenty-one words that he read in the spring of 1871- twenty-one words from Thomas Carlyle that helped him lead a life free of worry

    ” Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand” 

    So this point here is the euphoria we need, it could be related to almost anything in life. Enjoying every moment of the transition period. Doing perfectly whatever you find at hand, being faithful in the small thing and thereby you are building up the muscles to what lies ahead.

  • The ordeal of a heartbreak

    The ordeal of a heartbreak

    Ouch! I have just been bitten by a snake

    Oh! Little creepy creature; swift little bastard

    Your venom is quick and sedative

    Your poison is hostile to my bloodstream

    Yet, it is relaxing and intoxicating

    Explains why I am seeing one thing as though they were two

     

    You filthy crawling demon, why would you have such beauty?

    You have the cuteness of a newborn

    Your eyes carry the ignorance of a bunny

    And when you raise your head, tilting your fish-like neck forward

    Even the breeze move slowly caressing your velvety bod

    Aware of the havoc you are about to wreck

     

    Sitting here, helpless and weak

    As life slowly leaves my body

    I refuse to let your venom tint the sweet memories I relished for so long

    Fred, my cousin is here now but, the worm is long gone

    Far into the abyss of the rest of the world

    She left me; the serpent I married as a wife

     

    Something must kill a man

    But this is not a good way to go.

  • Get out of your nest and fly

    Get out of your nest and fly

    When she turned 18, it was in a foreign country far away from home. Her roommate,  Jane(confidentiality clause) was the first person to wish her a happy birthday but followed it with this sentence  « It is time to come out of your shell and start living »

    As a child, she was quite tall and had an affirmative stature. She was bigger and taller than all her playmates, She didn’t like that at all. She didn’t feel pretty and believed the petite girls were the most beautiful and everyone admired them. She was a shy kid and always wanted to hide. You know those type of students who will never talk in class or give their opinion, she wanted to disappear and be alone.

    Nevertheless, as she grew up  she grew out of her nest and learnt to fly,  but she soon realized that almost everyone she knew lived with a particular insecurity about themselves

    « If only my butt can be smaller,   I have a big nose, My boobs are too big, I am too fat, If only I could gain 10 kilos and have more flesh then my life will be better, I am too dark and people laugh at me, I turn red when I speak and I always hate myself,  I have sweaty palms and people are scared of coming close to me, I am short so I have to dress to impress in order to get noticed. »

    The truth is that we let people say so many kinds of stuff to us because they are things we also believed to be true about ourselves. For her, she kept them in her heart, she remembered them on her bed, her pillow was always soaked in her tears, her heart was often broken at the end of each day, yes she let it and you too, you are letting them.

    But then, She had to focus on something else, it was her studies, it was the perfect rebound of all negativity. She was reading and all she wanted was succeed, but this didn’t take the lack of self-confidence away.

    Her miracle started when she began to know herself, she started writing all she thought to God and this changed her life. It made her have a good relationship with herself, her pains, her thoughts, her strengths, her weakness was inscribed in that book where she wrote to the Almighty. She even wrote about those that hurt her. She gradually learnt to appreciate her person and her morphology, to forgive those that called her names and most importantly she gained her inner strength and confidence. She keened on to the word that she is wonderfully and carefully made.

    In life, we cannot all be the same, we are unique and all have our areas of greater capabilities. You are a masterpiece when you believe in yourself, others will see it and respect you. Confidence is not just an aspiration, it should be a way of life. At some point, we all have to get out of our shell and fly because we spend the most time with ourselves and therefore we cannot run away, decide to build yourself up.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkvGTht2xTY

  • Mental health in corporate organizations

    Mental health in corporate organizations

    Employment and its relevance have shifted grounds over the years for many reasons and the same can be said about the condition of engagement, working conditions, and output. Things were different before the inventions of machines as people engage grossly in primary survival activities like farming, fishing, and hunting which encompasses trading and transportation with time.

    Upon the introduction of machines during the industrial revolution, there were several other employment opportunities and exposures which include the printing press, mass production of several products with the advancement in transportation and communication et al. This evolution eventually gave birth to information age when almost everything is computerized and interlinked with the intensified use of the internet. There has been a persistent rise in the expectations of employers (government inclusive) from their employees to deliver excellently in the ever competitive market where there are millions of qualified but unemployed substitutes ready to replace any worker or staff lacking in any way. Thus, the struggle knows no boundary leading to several challenges in our corporate organizations.

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  • When you rise, the whole world rises with you

    When you rise, the whole world rises with you

    And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

    You are on your couch right now, thinking about how much of a disappointment you have been. You have not been able to do something phenomenal with your life, it seems existence is nothing but a joke. You wonder how the others have been able to get that silicon valley job and you still haven’t even got an interview to be an assistant.  Still, you have so many choices, you could decide to sit there and wallow in self-pity and pain or you could decide to get up. The former is easier said than done.

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  • The shaky teary old Lady

    The shaky teary old Lady

    At the train station, the boys walked by swiftly and then, I saw shaky teary old lady….

    Life has a basic trajectory which it follows toiling in a continuous transition of personalities regardless of gender. Life is generally accepted to be in stages in relation to age and status. It can almost be assumed that all parents envisage or look forward to, being a grandparent someday as it is a blessing and enormous achievement for many. The presence of a new life has a way of changing even a stronghold of enmity within a family, diffuse heated situations, soften enraged hearts and enhances unity.

    A newborn is a miracle that never wears out, neither can one get used to it without being a victim of its ever positive effect in the normal cycle of life. It evolves into a new phase when the birth is in the second generation. Grandparents grow soft on all sides upon the birth of their grandchildren. They get more tolerant and accommodating, more open-minded and forgiving, more selfless and hospitable.

    Unfortunately, life is quite complex and has its way of frustrating our existence. Some teenagers can’t even tolerate or stand their old one capitalizing on flimsy excuses ranging from being old school, talking out of context, to being ugly, walking feebly, and even a general assumption of being evil.

    Where did we miss it?  What went wrong?  Is our society sowing seeds of contempt? Is civilization a tool against the old folks? Hostility to a grandparent is not just inhuman, it is mental torture, domestic violence that needs swift action.

  • A dose of motivation: Ep 1 Sequoia

    A dose of motivation: Ep 1 Sequoia

     As I was observing my early morning walk, I heard a particular Hillsong music come up on my playlist. It was sent to me by a very good friend and I had it saved for almost a year, she also explained the nature of the Sequoia.

    So I took time out to read a bit about sequoia trees, they are sometimes referred to as giant redwood. These trees are characterized as the largest trees in the world and can live up to 3200 years or more, relatively more than any living organisms on earth, they can reach a height of  94m almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty in  New York, United States.

    These are special species and they don’t grow everywhere as they are mostly seen in some parts of California. It can take over 20 years for a sequoia tree to regenerate which it does only once in their lifetime. Reading through on the Sequoia Tree, I  later discovered they never stop growing until the day they die, so each day and each season is represented by a different type of growth either slow or rapid. It takes pride in itself, understands its identity and enjoys its lifespan through patience. Today, the Sequoia Giant trees are preserved and protected as they are only seen naturally in the  Sierra Nevada Mountains.

    In daily life, we go through seasons and our lives are characterized by different moments, sometimes they are good, other times bad. Self-awareness is a strong key in keeping the mind going, we are all passing through the seasons and we must never compare our growth with others. Can you imagine what would have been of the sequoia tree if it tries to compares itself to the Bamboo tree?  In your daily life,  what keeps you going, how do you go through the seasons? 

     

     

  • Education Malpractice

    Education Malpractice

    The breach of professional expertise in our education system leads to raising incompetent students and future professionals. Examination malpractice has done more harm than good, many students are weak educationally because their academic process has been built on a faulty ladder. Malpractice effects in mismanagement, misconduct in pupils and even negligence in legal means of achieving success.

    Recently, in the United States celebrities, coaches and other influential people have been charged with corruption and bribery. The scandal which has been a major topic is related to wealthy parents aiding their children to get into the best universities in the country. In some of the cases, the children are unaware of these dealings. One will ask whether parents assisted their children in order to maintain their personal social status or is it just a means of helping their wards secure a promising future?

    The fraud conspiracy involved a huge amount transferred to a particular Mr. Willian Singer who allegedly received more than 25 million dollars from March 2011 till the moment he was charged in February 2019. One of the arrangements is that he categorized the students as athletes. In the United States, sports is a big deal as it brings in finances to the universities which is why the academic requirements are often reduced to bring in potential talent. The most outrageous involved classifying the students as disadvantaged or having some learning disabilities to grant them extra time and provide them special conditions.

    This was alarming and went over the news and media houses in the United States. Some of the celebrities were charged and stripped of their contracts, sponsorships, and deals. The case is still open and serious investigations are ongoing. Civil society termed the scandal as unbelievable, immoral acts, impossible, injustice, etc…

    Unfortunately, in most parts of Africa, this is not the case. Education malpractice and corruption are cultural and consistently a means of living. It is more like « you use what you have to get what you want » mentality. Cheating, though an illegal act, is common and many students get good grades by cutting corners. It is just as politicians rig elections to get into offices so do students cheat and partake in all sorts of misconduct to achieve success as they climb the educational ladder.  Why is the cost of success this expensive even when it entails moral misconduct?

    In the case of William Singer, he supposedly dealt with an important sum of money and relatively the wealthiest parents while, in the developing countries, even the middle-class parents and sometimes the impoverish ones involve themselves in educational malpractice. It is a societal mindset including depicting identities, illegal conspiracy and aiding and smuggling of question papers and answers in and out of the exam halls.

    Like we say, it is easier to blame the government for bad policies in Africa but, if each person makes a conscious decision to be honest in their dealings, the continent will be transformed. Education should focus more on creating skills and giving practical experiences rather than aiming for a certificate. To what extent is having a certificate or degree that one cannot defend?

     

    References:

    1. BBC World News 
    2. International Journal of Managerial Studies and Research
  • Algeria’s President Bouteflika

    Algeria’s President Bouteflika

    Life, as they say, is in phases and each phase saturated with its own challenges. The Tripoli Program, which served as Algeria’s constitution when it won its war for independence from France in 1962, established the President as the head of state with a Prime Minister assisting in the operation of government.

    Uphill and down dale, Algeria has experienced its own fair share of hiccups from the amendment of the constitution to the worst nightmare of civil war between the military government and Islamic guerrillas. Abdelaziz Bouteflika won his first 5-year term election as the president in 1999 after all other candidates dropped out, and since then, he has won re-election consecutively undisputed and unchallenged. President Bouteflika, who uses a wheelchair and has rarely appeared in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, had provoked mass protests across Algeria over the past few weeks for showing interest in contesting for the fifth time in his announcement a day after he returned home after a two-week stay in a Swiss hospital.

    The reaction on social media was swift, and questions are being asked over the legality of prolonging Mr. Bouteflika’s term in office beyond the constitutional mandate. Algeria had been hit by strikes by teachers and students, as well as shops closing and train services being suspended as thousands took to the streets gaining more momentum every week since the first major demonstration took place on February 16, 2019.

    Algeria was one of the countries in the Northern pole of Africa that was almost untouched when the 2011 Arab spring had its grips on autocrats in the Arab world. The rising demonstrations happen to be the first that the country will experience in this grandeur. What could be said about the Algerians? Force or resilience? The tiredness of the known and a desire of the unknown? A wave of change? 

    Pressure mounted on Mr. Bouteflika to withdraw when more than 1,000 judges said last  Monday they would refuse to oversee the planned general election were he a candidate. Also, the military chief of staff, Lt Gen Gaed Salah, said the military and the people had a united vision of the future indicating that the armed forces were sympathetic to the protests meanwhile, top clerics and unions are not exempted.¹ Although, the 82-year-old president Bouteflika was almost successful in pacifying the protesters by ceding to their demand dropping his ambition of running again after two decades in power but the hope was short-lived following the cancellation of April 18 presidential election, a move that critics fear could allow him to cling to power indefinitely and thereby  giving room to a new phase of protests. 

    Another factor worthy of note is despite people’s anger towards the power structure widely seen as a corrupt and valid fact of millions struggling to make ends meet even with the country’s gas wealth, the protest has been relatively peaceful so far, considering their mass and police was never reported hostile. This is another indication that regardless of uniform or nature of the job, the whole country is on the same pedestal of change which will also come with a price. 

     

     

    Reference

    1. BBC world news
  • What is a Nation without Infrastructure?

    What is a Nation without Infrastructure?

    When we are in a state of ignorance, it means we haven’t had the opportunity to be aware or we deliberately disregard important information. Our society is divided into the two aforementioned, with political leaders enlightened about how to better their government but neglect the feasibility, and citizens in complete obscurity of their rights.  While the latter explains the category of people who sometimes don’t expect more than what is within their reach, unable to challenge the status quo. The former is aware that improvement can be done but totally evade the possibility sometimes for their own personal interest.

    Infrastructure and basic amenities are the major problems in Africa especially in Sub-Saharan Africa ranging from electricity and water to roads, railways, functional airports and ports. No economy can function appropriately without infrastructure causing a decline in productivity. Opportunities come with power, for example, a petit trader of frozen fish will be able to run her shop effectively if she is guaranteed of regular power, it means she can use her profit for something else, maybe providing education for her child instead of spending on fuel for the generator. Traders and manufacturers will always need a reliable source of power and water, the population will always require good roads to enable movement and also importers and exporters will require ports to move their goods.

    Leaders in Africa have been exposed to the international standards of living sometimes, by attending meeting and summits in other countries. In some cases, they have spent their study years living in economically developed countries, they have tasted and benefitted from good and perfect infrastructural settings. What then is the cause of this drawbacks in our countries?  It is obvious that infrastructure is important in providing a quality life for people and promoting economic development but it is also a shame that some older people who have never had the opportunity to travel out of their countries might eventually go into their grave without experiencing 24/7 constant power supply. How pathetic! 

    Also, the rise of urbanization has caused a desire to move and relocate to urban centers thereby overpopulating these regions, Some urban centers house more people than its superficial. It is the crossroads where all ethnics meets thereby causing congestion, some of them live in dilapidated buildings with large families squeezed into unfit structures eventually leading to their collapse, especially in the swampy areas.

    The government aptitude has to increase in ensuring the safety and well being of their population by providing the necessary infrastructure. A long term vision, maintenance and continuous progress by the government could be possible solutions. Additionally, the population has to be educated and cultivate good humanly habits. It is effortless to blame the government and leaders but the real change starts with revisiting our mindset as a people.