Happy New Month/I'm Going to Be Funny

It’s new month resolution time -- albeit seven days late. This month, I am making a conscious effort to be funny. If not funny, engaging. Yes, the space in my head where I spend most of my time is all-accepting and unconditionally-loving. Everything I say up there (i.e. think) is acceptable and patiently dissected for maximum understanding. But if I’m going to share that stuff with you and expect you to engage with it, I have to make it worth your while, yes? Glad, that’s settled. :) Cheers to conscious efforts!

In unrelated news, it's been three days since the general election and Kenyans still do not have a new president. Oh, the wonders of the democratic process!

My Undergrad Regrets

Alright, now that that piece of mind-blowing advice is out of the way, I have to say that there are many things that I wish I did differently in college. I’ve found myself going over them more and more these last few weeks. And as much as I recognize that there's no good that can come out of reliving the past, I would like to note a few of these lessons in the off chance that someone who’s about to go to college will see this -- or even for my future self if ever I’m trying to repeat past mistakes.

1. I wish I dived right in.
I tend to be a cautious person, and I like to weigh my environment. Before jumping right into things, I need to study people, figure out their story, know how well we work together and what not. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad habit to have but I have a tendency to spend too much time on this part of the process and let myself be in the shadows too much -- the problem? I let too many opportunities pass me by! So anyway, for future me, it’s good to get to know the kind of people you have around you, but it’s great of you get more involved with things.

2. I wish I went on an abroad.
This is probably my biggest regret, and it kinda ties in with #1. I was so scared about how to set up an abroad (how complicated the visa process might have been for an international student, for example), that I never even tried to submit an application. During my four years, there have been abroads to New Zealand, Peru, Brazil, Japan, Nepal, India... Given how much I am dying to have someone stamp my passport right now, I think these would have been great opportunities. Additionally, they would have all been such enriching experiences -- but yeah, I let them slide. So for future reference, I’m looking for any loophole I can find to get myself onto a plane and across a border. For anyone in school, being a student is one of the best excuses that embassy officials take. I learned this too late.

3. Be less afraid.
The biggest reason behind why I didn’t do things in this list is fear. I was scared of coming across as pushy. I was scared of not being able to see my abroad plans through. I was/am scared of meeting new people, or scared of people in general. I was scared to switch to my second major sooner. There have been lots of times that fear held me back. Going forward, I'll keep that fear impulse in check.

4. Realize that I can begin anywhere.
After realizing all the chances I’d blown by being afraid I spun myself into a spiral of I wish I did this better without actually doing anything about it. But the awesome thing about life is that you can begin anywhere. There’s no set time to do something even though that’s what we are told. Want to learn a new language but you aren’t seven anymore? Who cares?! Wish you made better choices with you majors? What skills have you learned from your other majors that you can apply to a life with your new academic interests? Find them and apply them! (This is directed at me personally) Wish you were more open to people around you? Hey, are there not people around you right now??! And so on and so forth -- basically, you wanted to do it then, what can you do now to get you there? Okay, now go and do it!

5. I wish I sought more help.
Given that my undergrad transcript is set already, this final one may be a sailed ship. It might help somebody though. I wish I made more use of the resources available to me. Why? I sit at my office for four hours each day twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone to come and ask me for help with a paper or chat about ideas for a paper. And you know what? Not too many people do. Once in a while a professor will suggest that students come and see me and then they will. See, if this is how teachers/professors and writing tutors spend their days, i.e. longing to help anyone who seeks it, I should have been more willing to ask my professors questions after class or talk with tutors. Since I plan on going to grad-school, I need to remember this feeling and tap into it. For anyone still in school, seriously, people are paid to be there for you. Actually, it’s your money, make the most of it! (But also don’t be rude about it.)

I think that’s everything that covers my undergrad experience. Eventually I'll write up the things I definitely wouldn't wish to have done differently.

Do you have any regrets lessons to add to this list? Would love to hear them.

A Whole New World

I've been listening to a lot of Disney lately. Every once in a while I need to silence the outside world and focus on the task at hand and days like these I listen either to rap a la this, or to Disney sing-alongs a la this.

The thing that I am learning now, listening to music that I did when I was five, six, seven and what not, is how much the themes of cartoons match my life! As someone who's had to defend my cartoon-watching in adulthood on numerous occasions, I didn't expect to identify with cartoon characters beyond entertainment.

Let's take Pocahontas, for example.



To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing
What's around the river bend
Waiting for us just around the river bend
...

Why do all my dreams extend
Just around the river bend?
...

Should I chose the smoothest course,
Steady as the beating drum?
Should I marry Kocoum?
Is all my dreaming at an end?
Or do you still wait for me,
Dream Giver,
Just around the river bend?

Quarter-life crisis, anyone?

I'd argue that to fully understand Pocahontas, you need to have graduated and taken a gap year so that all your friends essentially get a head-start. Then you'll need to figure out whether to apply for a job, go try your luck getting a job in Kenya, or maybe some other country where you know no one, or take the "safer" option of applying to grad school, in which you have to figure out, which grad program matches your interests, what your interests actually are, where your best chances of being accepted lie... And so on and so forth. And this is as a single person, because if you are married you have to figure out whether or not the relocation is an option -- how good are job/grad school prospects in your vicinity? If you are in a serious relationship/heading toward marriage then you have to question if the decision will affect that... sigh.

What I have learned while watching Disney, which I'd essentially forgotten, is that these lyrics, these stories are written by grown ups, who've probably experienced this at some point in their life. They aren't written by kids, so I shouldn't be surprised at how much I identify with my favorite Disney characters. And Pocahontas was just a start.

Bonus: I think I played the song a little too loudly. I can hear my neighbour whistling it in the hallway.

On the rare occassion that my politicians make me feel proud to be Kenyan...

I figure if I'm going to whine about our politicians being useless, I definitely ought to give credit where it's due, right? This post is a follow up of this one in which I urged all my US citizen friends to go out and vote. I also called Kenyan members of parliament pigs -- this is the part that I would like to follow up today.

On February 11, 2013, Kenya held its first presidential debate. Now, I'll admit that I was not planning on watching this for a number of reasons:

a) I have felt an increasing amount of apathy since the fateful day I called the Kenyan Embassy in DC to inquire about diaspora voter registration and was directed to a Facebook page "for more information."

b) The whole presidential debate thing felt like a sham. Politically, we have a tendency to ape the United States, whether or not it is applicable in our country. This felt like it would result in a poorly-executed, half-thought-through event.

c) Six candidates were set to be on the podium! And then by the morning of, Kenyan time, two candidates who'd taken to court over being excluded were added to the line-up. Eight politicians! Yeah, I figured I had better things to do.

Thankfully, I was guilt-tripped into watching it. More like, I felt ashamed to allow such a momentous political circus pass me by.

Now, I would like to go on and on about what went on, what points were handled, and which were ignored, maybe even hand out a score card to the politicians. But I would also like to keep this short. (You can watch a video of the debates here, here's Gado's impression of the debates, and this is what The Standard had to say.)

Here is why I was happy with the production.

1. Linus Kaikai. The man was a star! He was obviously paying attention during the US presidential debates. Many of the complaints about the moderators of the US presidential debates revolved around them either not doing their job, or doing it too well in favor of one candidate. Not this man! He was strict with the timekeeping -- when time was up, time was up! He asked the right questions, kept the candidates on track, followed up with more questions when they tried to wiggle themselves out of it. He knew he had a job to do and he had come to do it.

2. The candidates were respectful to each other. With 8 politicians on stage, I was convinced that no one would be able to get two words in. No such thing! People spoke in turn and candidates were very respectful of each other. Even though she was the only female candidate, Martha Karua received the respect due to her. I am so proud of my politicians!

3. People talked issues! One of my biggest grievances about Kenyan politics is its emphasis on regional politics and party affiliations. There was some of that, but they did a better job than usual of focusing on ideology. Perhaps the pressure of national viewership and the need to impress donors (I'm sure there was a little bit of that) forced the candidates to do their homework. Everyone brought their A-Game. Even Dida, who progressively made himself the clown of the act had valid points to bring to the table.

I came out of that session feeling extremely proud of Kenya. I know I definitely was not the only one!

I thought I was the only one who felt peculiarly excited & proud of this country after the debate. I'm glad I have company. #KEDebate13
— Mugambi Nthiga (@ItsMugambi) February 11, 2013

So, do you guys think that this feeling will last us a month, and maybe beyond the elections?

For The Day I Move into My Own Apartment...

Now that I've graduated and I'm trying to figure out what next, the thing I envy most about being settled down is the ability to decorate my place as I would like it. A little paint here, a framed picture there. I find myself looking more and more lustfully at interior design magazines and tumblrs. I'm calling this part of  my life the research phase since I am internalizing all the information on the internet for future use. Yaaay!

Here's a post about a room I crave. Somewhere deep down, I'm a minimalist -- deep, deep down. I tend to be a little cluttered -- but Einstein's desk was a little cluttered too so... *shrug*. In a way, I see the appeal of minimalism as having something to do with my half-buried desire to be a better neater person. How else would you explain my being cluttered but loving that clean, free look?

Recently, I came across the very simple-looking bathroom of writer/stylist/social media manager Samantha Hutchinson. As far as I can tell, from the little that she showed, it's all monochrome with a splash of pink. Perfect! Her blog is aptly named Could I Have That. I stole some of her pictures to show them on here. I particularly adore the black and white rug.


 

Finally, happy new month! January feels like it's dragged on for ages! But I'm not particularly complaining. I tried to put the extra 60 days of January into good use.

"The Unwritten Rules"

This minority thing is still kinda new to me, after all, it's only been four years. Where I come from, everyone looks like me, speaks like me, eats the same food that I do, and so on, and anyone who doesn't is the weird one. In college, I got used to being the strange one, but given my college's high international student enrollment (my freshman class alone had 13 Kenyans) there were plenty other people with whom I could be the "strange one". As I move into the work place, I know that things will be different, especially while I am still in the States. It's quickly becoming time for me to get used to being the only Kenyan, the only African, or the only person of color in certain environments.

As always, YouTube is my go to for these kind of intimidating, never-have-I-ever-experienced-this-before-what-should-I-do? experiences. And even without actually looking for it, I found this web-series, "The Unwritten Rules" that speaks to the rules of decorum that black people find themselves having to follow within the work place. It's comical and mostly satirical but already with my six-months of post-grad working experience I can related to the episode about hair.




I found one of the later episodes, about the party particularly intriguing. Why are black women viewed as anti-interracial relationships? Where did this come from?

Thanks to the guys at InkSpot. I may not need to apply their advice, but I can laugh about it and maybe use it as an ice-breaker about those tense race-related topics if they ever come up at work? Maybe.

Recycled | Random Thoughts pt. 3

I was just thinking about this rant. It's from a little over four years ago, when I was applying to college and trying really hard to convince my mum to let me go to Europe for university. It's interesting that all my reasons for wanting an accent still stand (but my perception of a US accent has definitely grown). I haven't edited it -- although I should -- I wanted to preserve my 18 year-old voice, comma errors and all.

I really should come up with a proper title...

I am shopping for an accent/twang (yes, the word is ‘twang’ – I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary). Of course not the kind that suits me like a pair of purple contact lenses, which if you have, I'm sure look good on you and which BTW I am still going to get, just the sort that when I open my mouth to talk, any of the following happens:

1. I get a job at one of our bigger media houses, noticed how lately anyone in the media has at least an accent or a twang? What really blows my mind is the inconsistency of the pronunciations. The Kenyan-twang is a mish-mash of all available accents: American, British, Australian, French, Mandarin- you name it. Basically, what yours sounds like to others depends entirely on what phonetics you choose to borrow from whatever region.

2. I get prompt service at Java, especially the one in Adam's. What's with them? Do I have to look foreign to get service? And you wonder why I sit for several hours, use your free internet and leave without ordering anything- you owe me at least that much, you biased people!!! It’s not so much as to get prompt service, than it is about gloating. Clearly, being that the colour of my skin is very far from not-black, I would still get ignored. However, I would derive so much pleasure out of complaining to one of the waitresses in my foreign tongue- make her feel the pinch of losing that forex money, and make sure her manager feels the same pain, only three times more.

3. People try to remember my last name if I had introduced myself, try to learn it if otherwise, or befriend me because you never know what MP, Minister, Ambassador or other prominent person spawned me and paid ridiculous tuition so that I attend school in a foreign country. Even though on further exploration of the fact, there exists a miracle known as Financial Aid, which means that the tuition need not be expensive but who cares? It is quoted in dollars and pound sterling! There are added benefits to this get-to-know-you-better; complimentary tickets and invitations to lavish parties, where I have to sit through another session of mixed up twangs. On that note, I love those people who twang with a shrub. I mean “Wow W, tharr is such a rovery dress. I should nget me one of those sometime.”

So as I shop, I wonder, Kenyan English with a hint of British? Because granted, Europeans have more class. Ama I go for good ol' American and sound like I watched too many movies and listened to too much Hip Hop? Note, the point is not to come off as a fake but a more 'polished' form of myself.

Obviously, as with everything there are downsides to all this adaptation. It isn’t all too glossy. Because once I take on my new talk, I am bound to lose a few “friends”. People that are obviously cut from the same judgmental cloth as the new crowd that I will be hanging out with. You know the guys that claim I am not “down to earth, anymore” or those that think, “she feels hot and snubbish, nowadays”. Why would the way I talk change anything about the experiences we would have shared so far?

While I'm at it, I need a whole new wardrobe. What's the point of having a ka-accent if I lack the fashion sense of my peeps from whom I borrowed the accent?

I was so much funnier when I was younger. He he.