It doesn't just make sense. As you pass through airport security, they take knives, scissors and even nail clippers from you. But have you wondered how it is that when you're being served the lousy fare that passes for a meal, the cutlery you're given is definitely not plastic.
OK. OK. It's against terrorist code of ethics to use airline cutlery as weaponry. In fact the captain would laugh at you were he to see you brandishing an airline table knife. But show him just a hint of your nail cutter and he'll readily take the plane wherever you want.
I stopped making resolutions years ago. I saw no point in making resolutions only to break them a few hours later. That said, whenever a year is dead and buried, I sit back and critically review it. What did I do right? Where did I go wrong? What could I've done better? Having done a thorough review, I then make plans for the newly born year.
Not too many plans, mind you. Just one or two major ones. This year, for example, I just have one major one.
No, I've no intention of joining that bunch of kleptocratic megalomaniacs otherwise called Malawian politicians. In fact, were it left up to me, we would get rid of all of them.
No, I was born once and have no intention of getting born again during this or any other year. While I may go to church this year, should a friend or relative get hitched or bite the dust, I can't honestly claim that being a regular church goer features anywhere near my list of priorities for 2008. My list of one, remember?
My major preoccupation in 2008 will be to reduce my personal contribution to global warming. Lest you think otherwise, let me point out that unlike George Bush come-lately, I've always believed our globe is getting warmer. I can still recall frozen taps while in boarding school, but that's a story for another day.
Engaging in a personal war against global warming shouldn't be construed to mean I'll refuse to hope on a plane and insist on hoofing it to Abuja, Dubai or Sydney. After all, my carbon footprint is nowhere near Al Gore's. In any case, I already do enough walking between my house and the office.
What I intend to do is simple. Forthwith, I'll stop eating veggies! I'll still be cultivating them, but that's as far as my relationship with them will go. I'll no longer be eating them. I'll also impose a total veggie embargo in my house.
You see, veggies are vegetation, pure and simple. Vegetation absorbs carbon dioxide which is a major contributor to global warming, right? So why should I continue to take part in its wanton destruction in the name of nutrition? Why should I continue participating in devegatation, if I may coin a word, for the sake of a few vitamins?
Instead, I intend to consume as much beef as possible. After all, by eating a lot of beef, I will not only have ensured my personal non-involvement in devegetation, but more importantly, I'll have contributed to the reduction in the number of cows on earth. Cows are herbivorous, right? So don't you agree that their eating habits are a major contributor to global warming?
Believe me, this hasn't been an easy decision for me because even though I'm not an out and out vegetarian, I love veggies. I love them not just for their nutrients. After all I can always pop supplements. But even if my body succumbs to malnutrition and packs up, I'll have died for a good cause.
Don't you agree?
The other day I cleaning up my laptop when I came upon some photos that I had long ago given up hope of ever finding---some of these I posted on this site. It just goes to show that finding stuff on a cluttered hard disk ain't easy.
Not just for you, mind you, but for the computer, too. Which explains why overstuffed computers are slow in booting, slow in launching applications, slow in retrieving files, and slow in just about every other computing function.
So go ahead and get rid of those files that you've kept all these years "just in case." Your hard disks need defragmenting now and again so your computer can access files faster.
Remember, when saving files, computers will in general just throw bits and pieces all over the place. All it keeps are the "addresses" of where these bits are kept. So the closer together these bits are, which is what defragmentation does, the faster it is for the computer to gather and give you the file you've requested.
Your registry also needs dusting once in a while.
For you to do an even better spring cleaning, you can use freely downloadable utilities such as EasyCleaner (http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm).
No, my keyboard keys haven't gotten stuck. No, I'm not suffering from bloggers' block. No, am sorry to disappoint you, I'm not dead yet.
Of course, I know some people who drool at the mere thought of seeing my ugly black and white photo on the obituary pages of the local rags.
Now, if am honest with myself, they aren't alone in wishing death on someone. I also have my wish-list of species who I wish would make haste and depart for the afterlife. Among them are thieving politicians, dictators, cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies, especially the green variety., and rumour mongers.
Oh, I hate purveyors of rumour. I hate people who broadcast "facts" without bothering to check their veracity. Unfortunately, my country has an unhealthy number of people who have nothing better to do than spend time at the rumour bazaar. It's their job to hear stories, trim them here, flesh them out there, or otherwise embelish them and pass them on.
Of course the stories need not be true. In fact, they're normally so bizarre you don't recognise they're about you unless someone points it out.
Which is exactly what happened the other day.
I admit I love more than one woman. Yes!
I love my mother. I also still love my granny even though she's no longer in this world. And if we stretch womanhood to include my pre-teen daughters, then the number of the women I love doubles.
That's all. You can count the women I love on the fingers of your hand and remain with a superfluous finger. Yet I keep hearing stories about about me having a whole queue of women spanning all classes. I'm bigged up into this man at the sight of whom women are ready to drop their skirts.
Me? What a laugh!
Surely, it can't be me they're talking about. To begin with my working hours are such that they don't allow much of a social life beyond a beer or two at my favourite watering hole.There's also the fact that I don't have the looks to send women's hearts into flutters. Add to that the fact that I've a terribly malnourished disposable income. That's the only commodity I know that can glue women to the most unlikely of men.
Above all, I'm terribly shy. Getting me to talk to one is no easy feat. So sweet talking a whole city of them is simply out of the question. Totally beyond my capabilities.
Of course, it's true the spark between me and my wife is irretrievably gone. We're still civil to each other so once in a while we ask about each other's health. We also talk about our children's progress in school and so on. But we don't chat. In fact, for over three years now we've rarely, if at all, been together in the same room.
Which is why the story I'm about to relate can't be further from the truth. I'll relate the story in the third person but bear in mind that the "he" in the story is supposed to be me. So here the story goes.
The wife had had enough of her husband's philandering. She knew he was at Chez Ntemba, a popular night club. So she called him on his mobile phone and said, "My dear, whatever it is you're buying there, I'm going to sell here."
The husband immediately left and rushed home because he didn't want his merchandise sold.
Utter rubbish. I never go to night clubs. Accuse me of frequenting the Capital Hotel bars and I'll promptly plead guilty. But Capital Hotel bars are normally so womanless some people jokingly call them male wards or gay bars.
But if you think this story is bizarre, wait until you hear the next one.
The wife couldn't take it any more and she wanted out, so the story goes.
She called the husband wherever he was with his latest conquest. "Chimwemwe's dad, you're not going to find me. I've already packed."
"Where are you going this late?"
"To my mother's."
"Just wait for me. Don't leave till I get home. I should be there shortly."
"OK, but please hurry up."
The husband got home and found the wife in the living room with her cases waiting by the door.
"Just wait a second," the husband said as he proceeded to the bedroom.
Some minutes later he came back lugging his cases.
A very shocked wife asked him, "Where are you going?"
"To my mother's," came the reply.
"What about our children?"
"They too have a mother, right? Each one of us will go to their mother."
To cut a long story short, the wife gave up leaving.
What nonsense. No such conversation has ever taken place between us. For one thing, it's too long. Secondly, each one of us is free it leave if and when we want.
No questions asked.
The other day I had a dream. Nowhere near as important as Kamuzu Banda’s Gwelo Prison dreams. Nor as cataclysmic as Martin Luther’s. But a dream nevertheless.
It was by no means different from my other dreams except for one small detail. In this particular one I had to visit a urinal. I even felt the relief that follows after emptying a full bladder. However, when I woke up in the morning, my beddings were still dry like they’re every other morning.
Not much of a surprise there, you might say. But then that isn’t how it used to be.
Decades back I would sometimes have dreams that involved playing with friends, say a game of marbles which involved shooting marbles into a target hole. Somewhere in the middle of a game, I would get an overwhelming urge to empty my bladder. Excusing myself from my playmates, I would rush some place reasonably out of view, behind a hedge perhaps, and let the valves go.
Unfortunately, everything would be just dreams except the relieving myself part. The dream would almost always be abruptly interrupted soon afterwards and I would discover myself almost swimming in wet but still warm beddings.
Alas! I had done it again.
Boy I hated those dreams! I loathed the business of having to find a dry spot in the beddings to sleep in for the remainder of the night. I hated the complicated morning logistics of taking the beddings outside to dry without being seen by my friends.
But despite this, I would still be relieved that it had only been, shall we say, a wet dream with no solids involved. Otherwise…I still shudder at the mere thought!
By the way, do kids these days play marbles? I’ve my doubts. Instead the kids today spend their time playing shoot them up video games on PlayStations, X-Boxes, Wiis and other game consoles. They spend hours honing their skills as baby couch potatoes by slouching on couches—remotes and snacks within easy reach—switching from one cartoon channel to another.
I doubt they’ve even heard of marbles. But their parents, who are now executives, still play it. Except they graduated to playing it with sticks instead of fingers.
And they call it golf.
By the way, have you ever wondered why it is that the higher one goes up the corporate ladder, the smaller and lighter the ball one is likely to play? But come to think of it, it makes perfect sense. You certainly wouldn’t want to heave too heavy a ball as you puff your way up the rungs of a corporate ladder, would you now?
Whatever. In any case, I believe that avoiding traps on the golf course helps make executives more adept at skirting around, or even through, the intrigues that litter a typical corporate landscape.
I’m not an executive so that may explain why I don’t currently play golf. Or perhaps I shun wielding a golf club because of a lingering fear that those dreaded dreams might come back. You see, one early dawn I may dream I was playing golf and in the dream I would dash to relieve myself behind a tree only to wake up in my bed floating in urine given extra pungency by one too many drinks the night before.
Just kidding. To tell the truth, I don’t play golf because nature already bequeathed me with too many handicaps to voluntarily want to acquire one more, even if it be a just a golf handicap. Neither am I too keen on being “under par” when I feel perfectly fine.
However, even though the closest I’ve got to a green is when I watch Tiger Woods on a TV screen, I’ve some advice for the golf-playing executive. And it’s quite simple advice, really. You see, besides a good caddy, you need a good personal assistant. You need an assistant to ensure your handicaps and pars are recorded without any snide comments about your putting inabilities; to guarantee that the appointments made on the golf course aren’t drowned in the apparently mandatory after-game drinks; to make absolutely certain that the business deal made on the fairway is closed; to check the stock movement on the Dow; and to send that e-mail to HQ as you shuffle your way to the 13th hole.
This assistant would accompany you on every trip, be it a business retreat on the shores of Lake Malawi or on top of Zomba Mountain, or a management workshop on a vineyard in Cape Town. This assistant would be with as you and your spouse vacation on the French Riviera. This assistant would even be your constant DBB (dinner, bed and breakfast) companion without ever awakening the green-eyed monster in your significant other.
Ladies and gentlemen the assistant I’m talking about is a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Or even, these days, a smartphone—sorry to disappoint those of you who had visions of wild three-somes comprising the boss, the wife and the assistant.
But I can see your brows knitted into question marks because you don’t know how to differentiate a PDA from a smartphone.
I must admit that these days the feature lists of these two gadgets read like the list of similarities of identical twins. Besides making phone calls, with these gadgets you can listen to music, manage your photo or video library, create, read and edit documents, use spreadsheets to calculate your mortgage payments, manage your e-mail, and surf the Web. A few even have FM radios just in case you don’t want to miss out on the news on BBC or the shenanigans in our parliament.
They’re even some that have built-in GPSs so you can navigate your way back to the fairway after that howler of a shot into the woods.
So what’s the difference between them if differences between them continue to blur into nothingness?
Well, the significant difference is the way data is input. While PDAs have touch screens, handwriting recognition and soft keyboards, smartphones are generally limited to numeric keypads with a couple of extra keys and buttons to assist with navigation.
Perhaps, I should also mention that PDAs are designed to synch with your desktop computer. Most smartphones aren’t.
In short a fully equipped PDA can easily replace your laptop. Not a smartphone.
By the way, don’t ask me to classify the iPhone. I haven’t lost all my marbles for me to torture myself trying to figure that one out.
I'm glad that we Malawians, despite our penchant to litter, are very good at recycling.
You don't believe me? Then explain to me why John Tembo is still MCP's leader? Indeed, tell me the reason Bakili Muluzi wants to come back to misrule us and plunder our economy? And while you're at it, why don't you tell me why we still have the likes of Gwanda in our political landscape.
Yes, in Malawi we recycle politicians. That's how we've maintained our environment in a constant state of political pollution. That's the reason we can't rid our parliament of numbnuts who are so myopic they can't see beyond their pockets.
But what ails Malawi?
Why are we still mired in poverty while our leaders become instant millionaires (and instant paupers when they get out of power)? Why is it that we're always at the top when it comes to bad stats (poverty, illiteracy, etcetera) but always anchor the good stats charts (GDP, life expectancy, an so on)?
Why can't we do business without a little something changing hands?
I think I know. It's because our country is misnamed. We need to change the name of our nation, and change it fast, if things are to get any better.
You're shaking your head! You mean you were never taught that nothing good is associated with words preceded by "mal"? OK, get out your dictionary and let's browse through a few of them. Malady. Malaise. Maladapted. Maladministration. Malapportioned. Malcontent. Malarkey. Malappropriate. Malapropism. Maleficence. Malevolence. Malfeasance. Malformation. Malaria.
Starting to get the drift?
Then, of course, there is Malawi. But just in case you think I'm just a maladjusted Malawian with a malfunctioning brain who views Malawi with malice, let me remind you that there's a country in West Africa called, you guessed it, Mali.
Need I say more?
Let's start off with a quote by an anonymous Zimbabwean citizen: "I've learnt my lesson...I asked God to make me a millionaire, but I forgot to state the currency!"
I suppose even God needs specifics.
And specific we were when the other day me and my mates discussed what ails Malawi's educational system . Over a cold Carlsberg, of course.
We were lamenting the state of our education system when the point came up that the Malawi Junior Certificate examination was a waste of government resources. Why bother administering an exam when it no longer serves as sieve for places in Form 3 (private secondary schools have only one qualification: money)? Why waste time and money when people require MSCE, the GCE equivalent, to be employed as office cleaners?
The taxpayer's money would be better utilised elsewhere.
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