Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Tagged... just what I need

As I'm still enmeshed in my being so busy at work that I'm finding it difficult to find time to blog, the realization that I have been tagged by Pilgrimage to Self http://pilgrimagetoself.blogspot.com/ is perhaps a welcome break......
I now have to answer the following questions and tag four others. I am afraid I'm not going to tag anyone but will answer the questions-yes I know I'm being a spoilsport- but almost everyone I've thought of tagging's been tagged already. Plus maybe this is the blogging equivalent of those "forward this e mail to 10, 20, 100 people" e mails that I keep getting from my nearest and dearest and keep deleting unread, so I shouldn't really be helping this tagging to proliferate....anyway

1. Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies?
I just watched George Clooney's Goodnight and Goodluck in glorious black and white, and it was a great film and I loved it, but still I missed the colour-call me shallow and superficial but much as I like the old world elegance and clarity of black and white, I just love my glorious technicolor............... after all if black and white was so cool, how come they invented colour later :-)

2. What is the one single subject that bores you to near-death?

Dunno, probably something like complicated IT programmes and stuff- I'm beginning to sound really shallow on this, perhaps the real me's escaping......... I remember my exasperation when as an undergraduate in Nigeria, I decided I wanted to learn to use a PC or as we termed it then "become computer literate" There were all manners of training schools springing up everywhere and I struggled to find one that would let me do what I wanted which was to learn how to switch on a computer, use it and turn it off. Each "school" insisted on beginning with lessons that started with "a computer is made up of a central processing unit, a keyboard...etc etc" and attempted to delve into the distinctions between hardware and software and all sorts of technical stuff that I had little interest in. I ended up having to teach myself, largely by playing (once I started working) on the computer that adorned my boss's desk even though he hadn't the foggiest idea how to use it, but all the trendy bosses were getting them (and the company was paying) and so he did.....:

3. MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium for prerecorded music?

I grew up listening to LPs- from the large 33rpm Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington to the smaller 45 rpm Victor Olaiya and Rex Lawson's highlife records.I can still smell the musty paper inner sleeves.... By the time I was ten or eleven, I was buying blank tapes and taking them to the local record store to have "selections" recorded for me which I then took to show off at school....I remember the fuss about whether you had recorded on Chrome or Normal...the chrome tapes were more expensive and allegedly better listening......Never really got into CDs and am now planning to buy an iPod...In my heart of hearts, I think I'm an LPs man- in spite of the scratchy quality......

4.You are handed one first class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and ten million dollars cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going … Ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run?:

No way. My family and friends are too important to me- although of course my circle of friends keeps expanding. I'd want my friends and family to share in the windfall and I suspect life wouldn't be worth it with all that money and no one close with a shared history to share it with....... at least that's the theoretical answer...who knows what I'd really do?

5. Seriously, what do you consider the world’s most pressing issue now?

We need to acknowledge our shared humanity and commit, borne out of that acknowledgement, to spread the "goodies" around....

6. How would you rectify the world’s most pressing issue?

Through blogging...hahaha. Seriously, by trying to apply these principles to my life..... Hey I didn't say I was succeeding....

7. You are given the chance to go back and change one thing in your life; what would that be?

Nothing, as Edith Piaf crooned....., je ne regrette rien. The joy, the sorrow, the sadness, the pain, the exhilaration, the laughter, the anger, the frustration....it's all been useful learning and worthwhile

8. You are given the chance to go back and change one event in world history, what would that be?

One event- you can't be serious!

9. A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole’ Opry – Which do you choose?

Can I have both? I love my country- thanks to the numerous uncles and aunts who lived with us growing up and played dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers endlessly...and I love my opera thanks to my "been-to aspirational" parents- Some mornings, I still wake up to the strains of the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco and imagine that I am back in my childhood bedroom listening to my parents' music wafting up the stairs....

10. What is the one great unsolved crime of all time you’d like to solve?

Who managed to get rid of MKO Abiola and Sani Abacha within exactly a month of each other and how did they do it?

11. One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal?

James Baldwin. I'd serve him cow tail pepper soup, followed by rice and beans with chicken stew and dodo, washed down with several bottles of Star beer

12. You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky — what’s the first immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact?

You mean there are really people who take life that seriously?

1 comment:

Pilgrimage to Self said...

Thanks for being a sport ;-)