Shiko-Msa

I’m excited. It’s festive season again. I’m feeling cute. The office atmosphere is lax and everyone is in a good mood.  It’s not dress down Friday but dress down December. Work is going on but it’s generally tools down around here. Someone is playing Momo by Murimi Wa Ka-Half and laughing their heart out. He’s not even Kikuyu.

It’s hotter in Mombasa. The sand at the beach is whiter, the water clearer. I want to go to a beach restaurant, twiddle my toes in sand and eat a salad with my fingers. I want to buy dresses. Long dresses, short dresses, white dresses, yellow dresses, red dresses, flowered dresses, flirty girly dresses, cleavage dresses… the whole shebang. I could dye my my hair yellow and stick a flower in it but I wont.

I’ll be upcountry for Christmas. For the first time though, this year there may not be a Christmas tree at home. My brother and sisters will be away and I never did blow balloons or hang cute lights and silver bells. Maybe because I did not inherit the Christmas tree decorating genes. Maybe because I’m the last born and there was always someone else to do it. Maybe because cypress makes me sneeze. Maybe because I was born this way. Maybe its maybelline….. that just came from the many maybes.

I do not wish to ramble on. Its happy season. Merry Christmas.

Unrelated: Whoever these are I love this photo.

Ladygay is not just a lotion to me. Its the signature scent of my mother. If gizzards were my father, the sweet gentle scent of ladygay was and still is my mother. Her showing up at home bearing a gift – a new dress, a pair of shoes, or just tropical sweets that seemed to live in her handbag.

The ladygay scent was the calming reassurance in her room whenever scared little me moved there in the middle of a rainy night with particularly loud thunderstorms.

Ladygay was the scent that wafted through the house in the morning when she was getting ready for work and little me knew that mum was awake, alive and well. That the world was safe.

Today is not mother’s day or anything. I was just musing over what lotion to buy myself this time round when it occured to me that my Mum has used the same lotion all her life. How?!

When Urbane Kenyan and Egichomo told me about writing my Five Links, I thought it was going to be an easy peazy affair. How wrong I was! This has proven to be a most difficult assignment because one I have over 200 articles in my database and two, a lot of my articles are spur of the moment and quite frankly I feel silly reading them back.

• My most popular post: Most popular by numbers was about Alvaro. I wrote it when Alvaro was a very new kid on the block. Stripped of the then newness and novelty of Alvaro, it will probably drowse you all. Here is the post.

• Post that I’m most proud of:Our Kid FC. Someone stumbled upon it and made donations of footballs, jerseys et al.

• My most controversial post:To veil or not to veil. The post in itself is not controversial because I simply stated France’s stand on the Burqa, information that could be found on any news channel. The reason I would brand it controversial is because I usually balk at religious and moral debates. I remember having jitters when comments started coming in but the civility with which readers put forth their strong arguments came out tops.

• Post whose success surprised me: This is a comp and this is a mouse. Yes, there’s someone out there who believes youtube is a plumbing device.

• Post that did not get the attention it deserved: No idea. But I could use this as an excuse to bring back Drive like an ant. That is where Our Kid asked ‘if an ant hit another with those receptors, will they go to court… oh wait for it… and become litigAnts?

• Or In case of airport delays where he referred to the 2010  Eyjafjallajökull Volcanic Ash as Ayeyoufuckallanditscool.

Have your done your 5Links? Consider yourself tagged.

I’m not one to have a book everywhere, but I read. Not as voraciously as I used to before demanding day jobs happened, but I read a lot all the same. I tend to obsess over a particular genre for some time and then snap out as soon as I realize that a girl’s warehouse can only hold so many facts, useless or otherwise.  That she can only get so much inspiration before it degenerates into boredom. That she has to decide whether her dad is rich or poor, get over it and get down to more African ways of doing business. That in her attempt to grow rich, she has to roll up her sleeves and get down to work. Aside from thinking of course.

So I read widely but if I were asked to pin down the one genre that holds more of my fancy, I’d have to say its True Crime and Investigation.

I’m intrigued by the criminal mind. Not petty muggers, pick pockets and bank robbers. No. Guys like Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway. The kind that kill, dismember their victims and stuff their body parts into suit cases. Those that rape their dead victims and eat their hearts. I will not try their sick in the head ways at home but I’d like to know from them how their minds operate. I’d like to play Clarice and talk to one of them if they could promise not to kill me and stitch a shirt with my skin.

I’ve read more Anne Rules and true detective magazines than I could count and watched countless programs about said insanes. Somewhere in my life there are hard cover volumes of criminal psychology and profiling books that I bought in a moment of blind impulse. Ok criminal psychology was a bit too ambitious but profiling I do read.

Unfortunately am not that brave after all. At some point I started freaking out even at whispering winds. I’d start at creaking doors and swaying shower curtains. I did not ever think that McShiko would kill me but hey, a lot of those victims are killed by loved ones.

As much as I read widely, I still go through other people’s lists of favourite authors and go, ‘whoarethose? This post is a promise to self to spread my wings and widen my reading scope some more. I shall soon look y’all in the eye and declare that my favourite authors are the likes of Robert Harvey Monro Elwes, Quintus Tullius Cicero and Pedanius Dipscorides. Soon as I can pronounce their names.

For now though, am reading Princess, Desert Royal and Mayada. If only for those book covers! Plus am intrigued by the Arab Culture and way of life.

From my log cabin in the woods – Paper book or kindle?

Why do I blog? As in why do I own a little space in the internet abyss to write whatsoever I feel like? Why do I have a medium to interact with bright souls from all over the world? Because its really cool thats why. Seriously though…

• Blogging ushered me into this community of great thinkers young and old. I love the idea of having a peek into the serious assortment of brains that is bloggers. Brains I would otherwise never have gotten to interact with in the brick and mortar world.

• Contrary to possible expectations, I don’t talk much. Even if I did I doubt I would have talked this blog. Now I heard that bottled up ideas result to voices in the head. If I had not churned out 200 articles in my two or so years of blogging, I’d probably be stack raving by now.

• Blogging makes me laugh. In the course of my blogging I’ve encountered many crazies who make me laugh real hard. Online, I relate better with good natured virtual conversations and humour than I do with manufactured jokes, quotes, inspirations and such.

• Blogging got my online persona out there and as a direct result of that, I’ve made some not too few coins. Whether for fun or for money, blogging shall inexplicably be a contributing factor to my overall growth. I’ve known a lot of people, made a lot of friends, gone on to meet some, developed and executed other ideas in the real world and …. grown. No I did not meet McShiko from the blogs.

• I like to try things. I’ll try out everything within my reach at least once. Key words ‘within my reach’. Thats why I intend to milk a goat soon. Ish like going to space with Richard Branson is not within my reach. Neither is Karaoke.

• They kept telling me I could write. I kept asking write what. Write where. Then blogging came about and the rest is current affairs. When the Lord asks me what I did with my life, I seriously think I would say I put whatever little writing ability I have to some use.

• In here I have a small time family of me own who I believe would offer support and encouragement in a jiffy if I put a cry out there.

• Is it silly to say that I love Decor? And that in a blog I have an online house to decorate as I wish? Splash colour, put bows, ribbons and nice little badges if I wanted to?

I think in the end I blog because I can.

Before I started blogging I was warned that I would have to develop a thick skin because some mean people out there would come and say mean things. I’ve never seen the need for that because I don’t see why someone should come to my personal space and spill vitriol. If my space is any offensive, you kinda sorta just don’t show up no? If blogging involved having to deal with barbs and online feuds daily then I really would have to think twice about it.

Why do you blog?

The following takes place between 7.30 am and 5.00 pm. First order of the day I check 3 email accounts.  On a bad day I come face to face with a cute smiling teddy asking me to please forward it to 10 people and I will miraculously reconnect with people from my past who I miss dearly. If I’m really unlucky there’ll also be a peaceful dove staring into yonder after drinking peaceful water from a fountain. That up there would be yours truly waiting for the miracle years after forwarding some mail.

In the course of the morning I have twitter, skype, gtalk, a download going on, numerous blogs, and more news tabs than I can count. All the while I’ve got itunes on shuffle zapping anywhere from Eminem to Chibalonza. Yet somehow this is still not enough for wired me. I need more. Onana has good beats and a nice video. I miss Teddy Pendergrass. Jennifer Hudson has a new one out. Long story short, add three tabs of YouTube to the mix.

Libya is burning. Japan is sliding. The US Internal Security Department has created some new strange gizmos. Someone wore an ugly dress to the oscars. Paris Hilton has done something dumb. It is of paramount importance that I eat some rare berries from South Canada. Kim Kardashian can sing. The styrofoam coffee cup on my desk is potentially carcinogenic. So is my lip-gloss…

By now my morning is near cooked. A text message here and mobile call there. I need to sort out something for family and that means more phone calls that beget more phone calls.

This is the point at which the desk phone rings. I pick the stapler and start prattling away. Yes, its only morning and I’m exhibiting the first signs of brain freeze.  The call is from the kindly company banker insisting that we need to close that deal soonest, otherwise at the current rates, the dollar could be at 100 bob tomorrow. That would be the stuff changed dynamics of a transaction are made of. To that end, excuse me, I have a meeting to attend. And quite a bit of work to do actually. The fact that I’m in the office means that the day is, or should be, all about my employer.

The hours between tea time and afternoon, including lunch hour disappear in a haze of office work, interspersed by the occasional tweet that often leads to a site that leads to another.  Suddenly its 4pm. OMG its 4. With just one hour left, I realize that I need to urgently reply so and so’s email, complete that article on google docs, and call so and so to arrange for a 5.30pm meeting for my side hustle. Only then can I go home and continue with my ‘always on’ life. This is the point at which I try to open my drawers using car central lock.

Angry and short of time, I vow to cut out some of this switched on ness. First culprit would be gtalk and twitter. Skype stays. Blogs……  Just when I’m thinking of hanging my blithering blogging boots, I come across this comment from one of Biko Zulu’s readers:  ‘That is how I established my reading list. ie my favourite blogger is http://shikomsa.com/. She’s intelligent, mature, writes well and has a sense of humor. She attracts like minded bloggers, who I read often.

Madam, I’ve been reading your blog for years even through the various site migrations. And the bloggers who you follow and in turn follow you are just as fascinating. Keep doing your thing for our sakes’.

Haiya! Boots back on.

Thankfully this demon of a day is not so common place for me. A lot of times I manage to nip it in the bud and have a normal working day. Once in a while I fail.