This was inspired by Bibi, BSNC & Miss FlyHigh’s cool audio blog. And partly Nice Anon. They were talking about ‘firsts’- first crush, first fight… you get. I had a little time, so I thought of some of my random, okay ‘firsts’-

- First blog I read:
Her username was Chikito, and I was thrilled by her hilarious F.G.G.C Owerri tales. That was in 2007, and I never knew what a blog was. That was the first time I was reading a story written by a Nigerian (on the web), and I was blown away. She had stopped updating since 2005 though. Since then, I have been exposed to interesting blogs… like yours :- )

-First Fight:
My first and last physical fight was in Primary 5, with a boy who always bullied me. While I have forgotten the names of many classmates, I still remember his name and surname. The annoying thing was that he wasn’t bigger than me (we were the same size). He just had the ability to tell the softies from the tough no-nonsense ones. Well one fateful day, I’d had enough when he threw a chair at me. I started slapping and beating him and he managed to put in a good number of kicks before people came to my rescue.

-First Female Friend…
…will always be G’green (one of her nicknames in school). In such a mixedup world, she who findeth a true girlfriend findeth a good thing indeed. We attended the same Primary and Secondary school, and we talked about everything, till Uni. separated us, and it hasn’t been easy keeping in touch since then. But she always has a special place in my heart (I take a moment to hold my right hand to my heart… and my left to my phone) :- )

-First book my Dad bought me, titled Luka and the Television. Excerpts as follows:
There was a boy named Luka who loved to watch television. As soon as he came home from school, he would rush to the tv, switch it on and would watch it for hours, still in his school uniform. Sometimes he never even noticed that he had not eaten. His father was very disturbed by this, but regardless of all his threats, Luka remained engrossed with the tv. His results in school became increasingly terrible, and Luka himself was becoming a terror in school- he had developed a vicious temper which resulted in fights on an almost daily basis. One day his weary father called him aside and said to him, “Luka, you know that what you are doing is not good. All this television is causing you to misbehave. Why don’t you want to change?” Luka replied, “I don’t want to change. I want to be used by the devil to do his works.”
So Luka never changed, and soon he paid the price.
The End.

Never mind the (weird) story plot, esp. Luka’s where-did-that-come-from response; I was totally silent when I finished reading it many years ago. I was wondering, this story book was bought specially for me. ‘Did Daddy browse through the book before he bought it, or does he actually consider me as terrible as Luka?’ Yes I watched tv a lot, yes my results were not vey good, yes I was quite rude to my Aunt, but haba!
Though I have forgotten the exact phrasing of the story, and even the price Luka paid for his disobedience, I always remember that response he gave his Dad. And I still wonder.

This is related to my next ‘first’, titled Cider Eats a Big Slice of ‘Humble Pie’-

-First major lesson I have learnt this May:
I wrote a job aptitude test some weeks ago. My GMAT (job aptitude tutorial book) has 5 sections of mathematical skill tests, comprised of quantitative reasoning and comparison, data sufficiency, and graphical analysis tests. The probability of being asked to analyse graphs is therefore 1/5 (my thinking).
I had precious little time to study-thanks to my love for dvds-so I decided to really concentrate on the other parts and completely ignore those weird graphs. Besides, in the few tests I’ve written, I have never been asked graphical questions. Well, as good-for-you stories go, the only math questions we were asked were graphical- and not the simple graphs I’m used to.
Now you know you’re in for a rough time when you cannot give correct answers to examples the examiner is guiding you through. But things were only about to get worse. I’d never bothered to ask anyone about the type of questions they thought the company would ask. I just thought, ‘ok, make sure you practice so and so very well’. And I knew I should have practiced the secret-but-famous SHL questions, but time was gone man. At the test center, it seemed I was one of the very few people that didn’t know wassup. We were going to be asked over 40 hot thermodynamics questions.
For someone who claims to be good enough for cutting edge organisations, ‘careless’ doesn’t come close to describing my attitude at all. As my bro. in-law would joke, “You don’ fall your hand two times abi?” (Bcuz this is the second time I’ve botched a major job test). It’s somehow funny- people think I read like crazy. They always tell me to take it easy (Big LOL). Anyway, I am happy to say that the laziness that used to overpower me whenever I was about to read has been vanishing per day. No more self deception; I am seeing the light:

(Economic Situation in Nigeria) + (Current Economic Recession) + (Exceedingly Large Number of Job-Seekers) + (Tek Company) – (‘Connections/Long Leg’) = “Critical Assignment”

- First (trivial) news piece I found amusing this month:
Our Minister of Health promised to give each household in Nigeria 2 mosquito nets; nets that are “special and very efficacious in tracking down and killing mosquitoes” (Sunday Punch, 3rd May 2009). Talk about Madam Kwoskwos and Other Scary Tales. I hope I never see the net while it is doing its tracking and hunting down operation sha ;-) ;-)

June is here = 6/12 = half of the yr already. As you go all-out to achieve your goals for the year, don’t mind the setbacks; rejoice in the days the Lord has made (shebi I sound like a ‘Christian horoscope’? Lol, that’s d first oxymoron I’ve come up with). PS: I am fully utilizing MTN’s free dictionary, as I had to confirm what ‘oxymoron’ was – “conjoining contradictory terms, as in ‘deafening silence’” Yay! I was correct.
Cheers!