Aboki And The Rest Of Them All

As usual, I woke up one other morning, and picked up my career defining noise-making habit on twitter from where it left me off, when I sprawled on my bed and dozed off the night before. Not that I have a set schedule or agenda, but noise naturally comes to me, so I'm able to easily make them. And today, it was about derogatory words used on each other by Nigerians. Of course, the #Haiku, #OOMF and #Soliloquy hashtags will come along, sprinkled on the timeline before the end of the day, usually away from dedicated time for #EventWorthAttending, and other business-based tweets. It happened that I stumbled the ability to educate, entice, stimulate, inform and sensitize those who have given me the honor of a follow, of diverse issues, brands, products and what-have-you.

This country ehn? It is big. We are so big that my native Niger has 300 documented tribes, yet even most Nigerlites can only identify as few as can be counted on one finger. And so, when I hear that Nigeria comprises 350 tribes, I give off a sarcastic chuckle, as I known that the oyibo who did the counting, must have evaded 'mosquito-infested areas, and promptly rounded up the numbers.

Well, #ThatsNoneOfMyBusiness. The idea today, was to make noise to a level that I could start engaging people in long exciting conversations, and it wasn't long until my timeline went burst in flames. An added humor of threatening to block everyone who used the words on me, promptly brought succor to the recalcitrant whom every now and then, seek satisfaction in seeing me hurt like some 'overlords' whom rather than drinking ice-cold water, will rather block or engage in twitfights. That was how one handle died a natural death. Well, I mean, after dissing Yoruba boys (and most of what the handle said, were usually true). Anyways, RIP @Songhainese. Not the 'Kendra' behind the handle oh, but the handle.

So, the aftermath of it all was that I learned -- yet again, of more derogatory words used on Nigerians by Nigerians, and the apparent disunity, reference to Nigeria's 'major' tribe brings. I blame whoever categorized Nigeria across tribal lines, with Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo as major. Anyways, by the time it was 11am, aguru/ebi/yunwa dawned, and I trudged off my bed in search of breakfast. Thank God I found bananas in my neighbor's fridge, for the rest now, is history.

ABUJA (10)

Abuja, thy wetness amazes me...
See how Father Sky slips into you with ease?
Not a whimper of winds, lightening or thunder.

ABUJA (9)

Abuja is wet again
My bed is never spared
Whenever her demons are here again.

Localization of Search and the Proliferation of Mobile

My penultimate assignment in the course Understanding Media by Understanding Google on Coursera centered on the localization of news, books, politics, heroes, etc based on the convenience of generation Y and Z, to easily access them on their mobile. Thus, because a lot of people today are finding it harder to let go of their mobile devices (%75 of Americans are with their phones for up to 20 hours daily), there's that debate whether if peering in to phones in the middle of a task, is beneficial and deepening that original task because the person is engaged; or it is a distraction from the original task, because the individual is bored. Find my argument below:

Owen Youngman posits, that the new "local" will no longer be defined by physical attributes, but by convenience and ease or the use of less effort, especially in accessing news, or relevant information via digital media; albeit the ease that comes on our mobile devices. However, more than often, because we feel that "local" can go around with us in our pockets, mobile could begin to define "multi-tasking". I disagree with this growing notion, therefore, I opine that if someone instinctively and repeatedly picks up a mobile device to consume media (or conduct Google searches) while engaged in another activity, he/she is bored and seeking to be distracted from the first activity.

Before completing this assignment, I had not totally taken a look at all relevant course materials for the week, because I had a hashtag conference project, and had to do the reports before the end of the financial year, today. Thus, moving from one article, to watching Joe Kraus' video and then unto Youngman's seemed like a man seeking for answer from all materials at the same time -- "multi-tasking" like Joe Kraus said in his video. However, after four hours of that plus taking breaks to look at my tab, reply tweets, watch some Mexico vs Netherlands battle it out in Brazil, I had just written the first paragraph of this assignment, albeit, with the other assertion that "I was being engaged, and seeking to enhance and deepen the first activity".

But there could not be any better example to buttress my point than my own very experience, because after taking 45 minutes out to read Nicholas Carr's "Is Google making us Stupid" and another 20 minutes in keenly watching Kraus' video, I am now able to drop the report writing for my assignment, knowing that I'm not really multi-tasking,but distracting myself from accomplishing either tasks. Thus, because I feel that switching from one article to the other could quickly help me reach my answer faster, achieving "efficiency" and "immediacy" like Mr. Carr writes, results in me achieving nothing in the end.

The conclusion is that I have had to abandon the report for my assignment, and I'm glad to say that after 2 hours of reading and watching the course materials, I didn't only get better grasp of the question, I am able to complete my assignment before deadline, after which I shall now pursue my report writing in earnest.