Revolutionay Road

Slept a friend's place last night...it her house warming kinda thing...and it turns out that since she didnt have anything in the frigde..Therefore all the three of us had in the morning was hot cup of tea, and some conversation. Nothing else!
Well our conversation drifted from this topic to that topic...and for some weird reason, Arjun talked about his trip back home to India a few months ago when he was promoted from business class to first class because of the many air miles he had accumulated! Obviously he talked about how short the trip was, with all the excellent treatment. You could see he had never had that kind of treatment before. That is not to say I was not a tad jealous. With his baby-ish face, an air hostess easily mistook him for a kid who is travelling without his parents, but he cut her short by saying he works for the oil and gas industry....and then requesting for his drink!

He then mentioned that it reminded him about the movie UP IN THE AIR starring George Clooney, as Ryan Bingham, a corporate dude who is hired by cowardly bosses from the round the world to fire employees for them. As such he is always on the plane, travelling round the world, and spending a few days at a time in hotels. More importantly, is Ryan's philosophy, since he lives a life free of any relationships with people and things. He is got no mission in life, except this. To accumulate the a million air miles, as he believes only six people have done this. Of course, as you might have guessed, after achieving this ambition, he realises that his philosophy was after all wrong.

This movie reminded me of THE REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, a movie I watched a few months ago on a weekend away with a group of friends. They have similar themes running through them! It also brings back The TITANIC stars, Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet (reunited again after The TITANIC). The movie is based on Richard Yates’ acclaimed 1961 debut novel, going by the same title. It is directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition). Warning is, there are scenes with nudity and sexual nature,

This is a movie that you can’t just watch for fun! After watching it, my ex-girlfriend (then my girlfriend) said she didn’t enjoy it because it was a bit depressing, some other friends called it their movie of the year. Others were simply astounded. It is not the classic Hollywood, happily ever after kinda movie. It is simply different.

The story revolves around a beautiful couple living in sub-urban America in the 1950s. Don’t fret, because it is story that has huge relevance even to us today. April (Kate) is a beautiful wife, and a stay-at home mother raising two kids, while Frank Wheeler is her handsome an office employee. They exude a calm, confident exterior of an extremely happy married couple; you almost admire their lives, seemingly full of joy and warmth. A prefect couple, an idyllic image of the American Dream we all have come to admire. Everything seems perfect; their neighbours are all full of envy.

Is there a creeping frustration within them, an inability to be fulfilled by their relationship and careers? Whether someone feels a sense of regret over past actions, or is facing certain mid-life struggles. The characters in the movie are all faced with these questions...and maybe a more important question. This couple believes they are somehow more special than the people living around them on Revolutionary Road (by now, you know where the movie borrows it title), and they deserve better than this.

Was a doomed marriage from the start? What seems to be the real problem here?? It sometimes hard to know whom or what to blame for the film’s events! Is it the sub-urban surroundings? Is it the place where you live that normally kills your dreams? The job you are doing? The people around you? Are they therefore victims of the very system that ensnares them? Or are they victims of their poor decisions? Either way, it is a tragedy, and the movie constantly forces us to ask this hard questions!!

Could it be that April’s dreams and passions in life died when she became a stay-at-home mother? Will flying away to Paris, and getting a job there solve the problem? Perhaps, Frank deserves better, can quit his job, do some writing in Paris, as he figures out what he wants to do in life! Could he be better than the job that he currently does? Unfulfilled dreams and passions? How do we explain the temptations of infidelity? How does April escape her emotionally dead life? Flying to Paris and starting all over again seems to be the perfect solution. What is wrong with Frank’s philosophy when he says that "All I know is that I want to feel things, really feel them."

Then enters, John Givings, the mentally unstable son of a local real estate agent (Kathy Bates). While watching him, you cant help but think that he may not be crazy after all. Maybe everyone around him is crazy! He seems to see through the veneer of all this. In one of the brilliant quotes from the movie, John says “Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” Perhaps, it will take an encounter with a “crazy” person to drum sense into all of us.

Richard Yates, in talking about the book said in 1972, that “I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs — a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price”
Wait, a minute, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM here? Until we correctly diagnose the problem, we cannot prescribe the right medication. Are the Wheelers’ lives an anomaly, or are they norm? Is life all about a happy marriage, secure dream job, or nice neighbourhood that we aspire for? Is our purpose in life bland, and mundane? Or like April Wheeler says “Look at us. We're just like everyone else. We've bought into the same, ridiculous delusion.”

The truth is infront of me!

In one of those days when I felt particularly patriotic (Yes, I am a good student), I stumbled across Don’s Wanyama’s blog, was laughed hysterically when I read the African proverb on at the top of his page “However much the buttocks are in a hurry, they will always remain behind.”... I thought that was very funny! It made my mind go in a few circles, wondering of the many people who are on a road going nowhere...and thus will always be left behind!

But that is fodder for another day!

I was impressed by Don’s analysis of the Teddy Cheeye’s debacle and the source of his perceived arrogance. But one thing that took my particularly attention, when at the emd of the article, he asked the question “...can we say the time to shake the status quo has begun? Or was he a mere sacrificial lamb??”
And I would like to give my thoughts to this. I believe that it is time to shake the status quo. But not in the way you think. Before we even go there to confront people, and tell them how they need to change. We need to start with ourselves.

I think we ourselves need to have the courage to look at ourselves critically and realise that many times we are living comfortably within the same status quo that we are telling others to leave. Charity has got to begin at home.

Now you might wax lyrical about how good you are, and tell me that you have not YET stole any millions of funds, or constructed shoddy roads. The question is, how many times have you refused to give a bribe when asked for one? Did you give that the traffic policeman 5,000/= because you were trying to avoid the longer, more painful and very inconvinient route! Well, the bad news is that you contributed to corruption. I know, we are guilty of this many times! The most important thing is admitting ths fault and doing something about it!

We have given in so many times to the demands of the society. I am not saying that I am innocent, I have been guilty many times, and I have realised that change has got to start with me. My attitudes! As long as I beleive that nothing can be archieved without corruption, then I am an utter failure and should as well wallow in it. But I should retain that little hope, and have the courage in the face of daversity to say "YES, WE CAN do it the honest way and still succeed"

Has there ever been a time when you hired the right candidate, the best candidate even if it means leaving out your relative in the cold. This requires courage....but it is the price for change. How many times have you asked the question “Whom do you know there?” whenever there was a rumour of a bid, job, or an event you wanted!

As the bible rightly put it...the truth is not out there, but right here...in front of us!

Dance school....

I am an avid dance fan! These days I have taken to waltz, ballroom and tango. I am doing Argentine tango in one school onFridays and ballroom dance in another. I have done a little bit of salsa, but it was during a very busy period of my life so i didnt learn much.

Now I have failed to coerce, cajole or convince a girl to go with as a partner! yeah, Iknw you will all say I am not that smooth! But guess what,I get to dance with the teacher. The last two weeks, I have gotten to dance with thedance-teachers best student. Infact she told me that the dance teacher is her god-mother. The girl herself is training to be a dance teacher, dance is her passion, she actually quit college to pursue dance..blah blah! She has got the moves,looks...almost everything except that she has a Geordie accent! Hopefully I will be ableto work around that! I will find out about her beliefs later.....


Well, we have sort of struck a cord, and I talked about whether she is free so that we can get-together for coffee sometime! That was last Thursday, I got her phone number then! I gave it a few days, didnt want to call her the next daylike most guys would do!

Thing is, I called her up today..unfortunatey the phone wasnt answered and it went straight to voicemail. I wanted tol eave a message. I actually attempted..after a few minutes of recording my message, listening to it, and re-recording it..i just discovered that my voice and tone made me sound way too nervous! So i deleted the voicemail! I might cal again sometime..and will think about leavinga message!

I googled myself!

I am sure most you guys use Facebook? Chances are that you must have heard of Compare, that Facebook application. The risky assumption I am making here is that you, dear blogger, are very media (or rather internet) savvy. Whether or not you use it is another question, after all we are bombarded with all the applications which actually ever add value to our lives, whether in monetary of entertainment value! The one thing most of these applications do is waste our time. Yet we have only 24 hours a day!

Now, the Compare application has a fine way of advertising itself. They say.......“It's a pyramid of how many people trust the people that trust you. And the people that trust them - it goes pretty far. This number also means that if you wanted to send a message or thought to the whole world, these are the people who would accept your message as trustworthy, because they have faith in people who have faith in you. Think of it as your influence and reach.”

Pyramids of trust? Bollocks. Man, that is one good trick to keep us hooked to it, especially if you have ambitions! Do not ask me what sort of ambitions, because I still need to stay alive in order to do achieve it. So I actually decided to check out how popular (or infamous)I am by doing a rough internet search about myself. I had to look for a benchmark with to compare myself. Who better than Barack Obama, well be cause for starters we have a few things in common. And he is just guy who wouldn’t mind this exercise.

So I took Googled Obama, and it yielded 163,000,000 English pages for Obama in 0.23 seconds)” Damn, the guy beat me! Google yielded 4,390 English pages for in 0.18 seconds. Wait, the playing field was not level. I used both my first name and surname. So I decided to search only my surname, and my internet popularity improved by 1073.12%. The Google search yielded 51,500 English pages in 0.18 seconds. Yeah, he still beats me there.

But guess what, I at least beat him on time! The search for me was 5 seconds faster. Damn it. Was the CIA screening my search for Obama? They went, right...who is this bloke? What is the IP address of his laptop? Right, what does he want with our President. OK,he can goon...and by the time they answered all these questions, 5 precious seconds had gone by!!

Ratios:A lesson in maths!

It’s amazing what ladies want! That movie “What Women Want “in which Mel Gibson starred in was quite a classic. I mean the title was confusing enough; you would dash to watch because you think it would help you sort out all the mystery. But when you go to the cinema, with a knowing smile on your face, thinking...”maybe, just maybe this time...”, and alas, you get disappointed...like you do when you watch many of the current movies!

On a rather random note, I am going for a potential date on Sunday to watch the new James Bond movie, Quantum ofSolace, and am hoping she says she will inform me tomorrow, but somehow I think she will say yes! My my gut feeling is that it is over rated and over hyped..like most things with a British link!

Anyway, whenever you ask the ladies what it is that attracts them to men, they have all sorts of answers. The legs, eyes, the way he walks...well, nowadays...even the size of the wallet if a big deal! Nevertheless, the answers are as diverse as they are weird! Long gone are the days of true love. Broke guys like me are in shit!!
But there is one thing that most Ugandan girls all agree on is one thing, that the dude has got to be “tall, dark and handsome” () Is it possible for the guy to be tall, dark and un-handsome??

Now, we guys from the North have always had an edge when it comes to the tall, dark and handsome bit!! In this respect, the playing field has always been to our advantage! But there is one thing, one area where we have always fallen short!
Now just one thing....now we guys do not need you to tell us that our accent is kinda-not-so-cool!! Well, a little bit off the mark! But this is an area that we have always worked around, with some effort, and probably exposure! I know we the Okellos of the world know that we have got all...almost everything in place!! Pull your chair closer, and let me narrate to you a story!

I had a maths teacher in my early days in secondary school. He was a brilliant man, by any standards! Thinking back, I still wonder why he didn’t end up in NASA, or even ended up teaching rich kids in then Mpigi or Mukono if all options had run out! Well, perhaps he was inspired more by love for his nation of his land than by anything else! There are only a few good men remaining!

In one class, he was teaching the topic of RATIOS. And he had to use an illustration to drive the point home. He used two guys Ochibo (pronounced as Ochibo, with an “h”) and Ochora an example. This is what he says, or rather this is what I heard “If Osibo and Osora are to sare mangos in the rasio of sree to sree, Osibo will not seat Osora and Osora will not seat Osibo. They will get equal sares”

Until, we get our act together and learn how to deal with words that have “ch”or “sh” in their pronunciations we still have a long way to go!

Famous quotes!!!

This is one of the greatest quotes to ever emerge from the annals of criminal court history....right here in our backyard!!! Who said these words??

“We submit that this whole case is and was a fabrication from beginning to end, calculated to embarrass KB. This sad case was born in the deluded mind of Ms JK, it was nurtured and developed in SH. It was cooked to imperfection in the DIC of the UP. It was presented into full inadequacy by the DepDPP. Now it’s courts time to dismiss it.”

No FB!

1) I just started workin on Monday. And that was after i had handed in my dissertation on Fri. And that was after flexing for 3 months..well, just more than one month,...with optmisation and simulations!

2) Being a gud company that it is, almots all sites are blocked..including Facebook. You try to access any of teh sites, I am starkly warned...ACCESS DENIED!
So i guess am not paid to surf FB, chat onlie,or even check mail!! That does not mean i have been paid yet, coz am only five days old)

Man, life is tight. So i need a house that has got internet in it.
Ok, i better sign out, lest i be found blogging....else I am forever screwed!! Did i just hear the door opening..????