WHEN SLEEP CALLS! NOTHING ELSE COUNTS!!

Yesterday I was driving past Oshodi Express at about 6pm when I looked across the road to the opposite lane and my eyes caught a man whom I suspect was, from his looks, one of those boys also known as 'Agberos' who collect money from every commercial bus that ply the route.

This time, he wasn't running after any of the buses, rather, he laid on the culvert looking well balanced with his hands on the chest and was sleeping peacefully away inspite of all the heavy noise around the very busy Oshodi without a care in the world whether any vehicle could lose its brakes/control and ram into him while he slept.

The picture of the 'sleeping man' once again reminded me of the saying that 'one cannot cheat nature', some things such as sleep are so necessary that once they SERIOUSLY come calling, there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. When you are sleepy and tired, no one will need to compel you before you go Zzzzzzzing away.

I recall an incident from a couple of years back. To say I was tired on this day would be putting it mildly as I was VERY tired and so fagged out as an outcome of a very tedious week at work. I had this young man, who was also a colleague with me in the car and after driving for nearly an hour, we got stuck in traffic and while we waited for traffic to ease out, I put my head on the steering for a quick rest but slept off and the next thing, I was already dreaming when I woke up to blaring horns and my colleague nudging saying "madam, madam, what are you doing?".  Apparently before the nudge, he had  tried to wake me up for a bit by calling out to me as soon as the cars ahead of us moved. It was the blaring of horns from the cars

behind us that made him to start nudging when I didn't respond to his call. I woke up with a start and immediately moved the car but not without noticing the look on his face as though he was scared that I may have passed out when I didn't respond early enough. What if I was alone in the car? From that day, I swore never to drive when tired but to just stay somewhere and take at least a five/ten minutes nap before hitting the road. Every other thing can wait because if anything happens, the world will still go on without you.

Speaking about things waiting until it is the right time to do them, the other day it was reported that Kiss Daniel sent out a tweet reminding everyone not to use the phone while driving as he recently escaped getting hurt in an accident which occurred while he was sending messages and driving at the same time.When I heard the report, I laughed because at this stage we are in, no one needs to be told that it is very WRONG to drive and chat. Even a toddler knows it is wrong.

Stay safe, sleep when tired, while driving use your hands-free, park before taking that call or else ignore those calls as they can all wait!

AFTER VICTORY, WHAT'S NEXT?

Okay! Now that the courts have upheld the elections of Wike, Umahi and Amosun as governors of Rivers, Ebonyi and Ogun States respectively, can all those who have being fighting all over social media on which of the political parties' candidates will eventually emerge winners stop all the fight?

Yesterday, before the court delivered the verdicts, a couple of people were having the argument on who will eventually be upheld and the only thing I said was "please, let the winners emerge so that we can move on because I don't know about any of you, I am tired of elections and their re-runs" which is fast becoming a norm in the Nigerian political environment.

So it was with joy a lot of Nigerians received the news and now we can all move on. For all those who were or are still not happy with the verdicts, please let's just move on to better things because if you ask me, all politicians are the same.

To all the winners, please remember all that you promised during the campaigns. Do the work and make the people you represent proud!

Dazzol!

WHEN PROTEST YIELD POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE RESULTS

Some workers have huge guts no doubts. Can you beat this?

Imagine yourself a magnate and CEO of a large chain of businesses spanning years and spread all over the place with a workforce that the Federal Government should be grateful for as it has helped to take many of the unemployed off the streets. Then you are invited as a resource person given your wealth of experience to a seminar and then all of a sudden, gbam! A group of persons storm the place only for you to find out that they are your staff/workers from one of your companies claiming non-payment of salaries for several months. What would you do if you found yourself in such a situation?

That was the situation Jimoh Ibrahim the Nigerian Billionaire Businessman found himself while giving a lecture at the 5th Energy Group GMD conference which was been aired live on AIT, was interrupted when his worker from one of his companies National Mirror burst into the venue of the event demanding to be paid salaries that have been held for several months thereby causing some confusion for Jimoh whose day turned out like no ordinary day as all those present looked as surprised as the business mogul himself.

Nevertheless, trust Jimoh Ibrahim as he was able to handle the situation but not without first of all blaming the top management of the company which he said was just one out of his 16 existing companies and thereafter promised to pay the salaries of the workers which according to the workers have been held for five months. However, sadly, the promise was made on the condition that the Managing and Deputy Managing Directors resign as soon as the conference being held was over for lack of competence.

Now some of the questions most people asked after seeing what transpired on air were (1)Was the Mogul really surprised and did not know that the salaries were not paid for those months? (2) If he knew why did he wait for the protest on air before promising to pay? (3) Was the money available and the DMD and MD refused to pay? (4) Are they really to blame (5) Were they acting on orders and still got burnt at the end of the day by the one who gave the orders? (6) Did the workers have it all planned to dishonour the top management? The questions went on and on.

The sad part of this whole story is that some people have joined the unemployed market again only that this time they will be looking for top management positions which are of course not available as most organisations are looking for young graduates who they can pay less for doing so much work. 

So for those of you who still have jobs, not just jobs but good paying jobs, hold on tightly to them because there are no greater paying jobs out there and even if you are offered a better package than what you have now, what is the guarantee that the pay will be consistent? Ciao!

  

CANDY CRUSH AND THE CHOICES WE MAKE IN LIFE

I know a lot of people play the now VERY popular candy crush including the many other crushes like Soda Pop, Frozen, you name it as they have become countless. Nearly every game on our mobiles look like you are crushing something or popping bottles.

I hated the mention of the name 'candy' even before it got to 'crush' as I thought many people especially ladies were getting too addicted and over excited with the game save for the Zuma, Subway surf and the rest which a lot of men and children have become addicts as I have seen where a grown man was playing subway surf and trying to cross a very busy road at the same time. Now that's what I would term 'crazy'.

On a few occasions I have had to put up warnings on my facebook page to stop some of my friends from sending me notifications and requests on the game as I was then not interested. Did they listen? Of course a few of them stopped while many others did not and even as I write this, I can lay a wager on the fact that some requests/invites for lives will be waiting from the STUBBORN candy crushers who will not let me be. Hmmm *what more can I do*?

Like I mentioned, ''I was then not interested" but today it's a different ball game as I am now one of the numerous lovers of this addictive game and its many look alike. I now play them so much that I could pass on a meal just to keep getting to the next level, another level and another, just on and on until I run out of 'lives' for the day but one interesting thing is that, I have NEVER sent a request/invite to anyone on facebook as I am always patient enough to wait another 24hours for a refill of 'lives' to continue playing the next day.

Now away from just the playing of the games as the focus on this write up is on the lessons gained so far while playing these games. For those of you who play the game I'm sure you know by now that for every move you make to destroy/crush those jelly walls or create a candy to crush an entire row, are choices you make based on what you intend to achieve at the end of each game? Good!

While playing the game what has again been consistently brought to the fore is that whatever choices we make in life have consequences, good or bad and we should be ready to take up the consequences of every one of them.

Sometimes during the course of the game, I get tempted to make a move to earn some very great points at a go but then I would take another look to see that after that very large earn, I may end up losing the entire game as there are some difficult jellies below that may not get broken/popped/crushed before your moves/timelines are exhausted if you go for the big swoop starring you in the face at that point in time thereby rendering the large points earned useless when you eventually fail that level as a result of that initial big earn. Thereafter you would wish you had taken the little pops/crushes one at a time until you finish the level or used that very big 'rare' candy crusher wisely when you got it.

What is she talking about? *You may ask* And I will tell you in response to that question.

This is 2016, a year that we all hope would be better than we've ever encountered and so I admonish that we make better choices with the opportunities we get irrespective of how big or small they come because there is always an outcome/consequence of the choices we make. 

At this point, *even though January is far gone* let me say HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE! and happy crushing year to all CANDY CRUSHERS!!

And lest I forget, for all those subway surfers who play while crossing or even in traffic, surf carefully, stay alive by waiting until you are in the right place to beat every level of whatever game.